Equilibrium for Honours

Jacen

... don't all three of those classes have that ability? Window, scry, detect?

Trilliana

Jacen said:

... don't all three of those classes have that ability? Window, scry, detect?

That was my initial response, but I think he means more for classes or generally people that don't have skills to do such.

Kresslack

Jacen said:

... don't all three of those classes have that ability? Window, scry, detect?

I was saying such as classes that do have those abilities...

Herenicus

Filthy rogues deserve the dirty-snow colour more than Targossans, in my opinion. 

Vadimuses

NameDB waited to do one honours at a time - no commands would go into a queue on the server.

Yep, name highlighting is pretty expensive and that's why it is good to do it client-side and allow people the option of doing so!

Penwize

I don't understand why it was put on EQ instead of given its own balance.  This is a significant change to group combat.  I have rather often had to honours someone in a raid because they're new or returning and I have no idea who they are and if they're a soldier or not. 

Please fix this.

Tharvis

honours getting a new and seperate balance timer that can't be abused by another party in combat sounds like a better idea overall

Nakari

I first noticed the change when I was honoursing someone while walking and lost them as a result. The delay seems perfectly reasonable, but putting it on eq makes a simple command, one that's pretty handy to use when meeting someone or just wondering who someone is, into a pain to use when walking, hunting, combat or whatever.

Sena

I often accidentally click names on qw (which, with mxp on, is a link to honours), so having it cost eq could be pretty troublesome even when I don't need to honours someone.

Tahquil

@Sarapis : can we have a poll to pick city colours? I know there is a few colours it seems everyone has for certain cities in ndb.

in fact I'll start a topic for votes in a few hours if people are interested

Sanek

(If we can't, a bit lighter blue for ashtan would be easier on the eyes)

Nemutaur

How about everyone just prunes their ndb? I know nobody ever needs to have more than 1k names in there. I think I have 4.3k and 4k of those I probably will never care about and wouldn't mind if they weren't highlighted at all etc.

Eq has implications in combat sure, just make honours non-forcable and that fixes most of them. The rest are all user error then and not really anybody's fault but their own.

Sarapis

If you guys want to see who is in a city without the colours, just do qw <city> and have your client color them as you like!

Tahquil

I like being able to see everyone at once though! I was just suggesting a calmer colour scheme that's easier to let eyes slide over and causes less strain so we can play for longer!

(also we have xterm colours now, may as well use them!)

Kayeil

Can we have something like Vadi's qwho m functionality? I don't use most of the ndb features but this one I probably use most frequently. The rest of what you added serverside is awesome. His qwho m looks like this (sorry it's kind of long):

(svo): Done checking all of wholist!

(svo): 84 ungemmed people are visible:

 in Aerinewild, the:

   in Flowery dell: Skarlath (1 person)

 in Ashtan, the City of:

   in Balcony overlooking the gardens: Sys and Thaumas (2 people)

   in Northern Parade of Zarathustra: Rotose (1 person)

   in Beginning of Guardian's Avenue: Josoul and Kysha (2 people)

   in The Shadows of Chaos: Arralana (1 person)

   in Outside the House of Epicurus: Ordric (1 person)

   in Atop the battlements of the city : Dalran, Jhui and Mizik (3 people)

   in Entry to the Merchant's Quarter: Venser (1 person)

   in Wrought in Flames: Avante and Khaibit (2 people)

 in Ashtan, the City of (Lake Balaton):

   in Lake Balaton: Sano (1 person)

 in Creville Asylum:

   in A narrow pathway through the rock: Wymer (1 person)

 in Cyrene, the City of:

   in The Magic Serpent: Allene and Haeley (2 people)

   in The Imperial Tiltyard: Aerek (1 person)

   in Centre Street approaching the eas: Talion (1 person)

   in Centre Crossing: Kerria (1 person)

   in At the edge of a plum and pear or: Sanek (1 person)

   in Inside the Ram's Horn: Razzlo and Sinann (2 people)

   in The Imperial plaza of Cyrene: Aziik and Halgar (2 people)

   in A quiet grotto behind massive bou: Eica (1 person)

   in A grassy knoll before a fountain: Kandra (1 person)

   in A tranquil bend in Spirit Lane: Aeryi (1 person)

 in Cyrene, the City of (Garden):

   in The Mojushaine Hall of Philosophy: Airin (1 person)

   in The Cyrenian Archive of Sapient H: Kesindir and Runa (2 people)

 in Eleusis:

   in Treetop watch post: Rom (1 person)

   in Atop the Eleusian Gatehouse: Maccabeus (1 person)

   in Upon the Oaken Way: Synnendir (1 person)

   in Granary among the trees: Malec and Tulliana (2 people)

 in Hashan, the City of:

   in Within a glass pavilion: Rekhyr (1 person)

   in At the southern gates of Hashan: Karoma (1 person)

 in Lake Vundamere:

   in Between the pebbles: Hydrogen (1 person)

 in Lodi, the Valley of:

   in Constable's Office: Cadderlay (1 person)

 in Manara Burrow:

   in Before the Manara barracks: Seraya (1 person)

 in Mhaldor, the City of:

   in A guardhouse: Ainly (1 person)

   in Drake Gloom: Cooper (1 person)

   in Pestilent Way: Lumia (1 person)

   in Stygian Crossroads: Kitiara, Melodie and Xinna (3 people)

   in A massive gatehouse: Vivessa (1 person)

 in Minia, the Land of (Ember Tower):

   in Back staircase in the Tower: Zyr (1 person)

 in Muurn River Valley:

   in Muurn Cove: Dalavan and Trilliana (2 people)

 in Pash Valley (East):

   in Meadow east of the Pachacacha: Bemanigisc (1 person)

 in Prelatorian Highway, the:

   in Ivy-covered archway to Minia: Mim (1 person)

 in Savannah, the (Central):

   in By the northern tip of the lake: Visnia (1 person)

 in Siorraidh:

   in An expansive library: Kei, Keorin, Lenn, Nicca and Nylan (5 people)

 in Siroccian Mountains, the (Orc Outpost):

   in The chieftain's chambers: Aurom (1 person)

 in Targossas:

   in Rally point: Brissan, Invictus and Rohai (3 people)

   in An airy alchemy lab within Naxos: Arkhuro and Lavakhi (2 people)

 in Tasur'ke (Port):

   in Cavern looking out onto the sea: Rien (1 person)

 in Tir Murann:

   in Traversing over debris: Seifur (1 person)

 in uncertain area:

   in A cosy forest hollow: Rashmi (1 person)

   in Overlooking the sea: Grom (1 person)

   in Entering a dank cavern: Dunn (1 person)

   in Leading to a small room: Treyal (1 person)

   in A spacious cavern: Multon (1 person)

   in North of New Thera: Bambam, Dhaia, Killian, Makaela and Shirszae (5 

people)

   in Training hall: Andregor (1 person)

 in unknown area:

   in (house) The Oakhouse Parlour: Anedhel and Lianice (2 people)

   in The Heptagon of Fiends: Saeva (1 person)

   in (house) Beneath an enormous willo: Hera (1 person)

   in A spacious lecture hall: Morganbarl (1 person)

Prythe

Sarapis said:

QW <city/rogue> is in btw.

Your responsiveness, as always, is the ultimate in customer service. 

(I'll leave the discussion as to whether the order of all this happening could have or should have been reversed to others.)

Avto

qw city fixes big part of issue. Name coloring would be great, but if it stresses game then could be left as is. Honors EQ is really problem, give it seperate balance/cooldown on reusing another honors.

@kayeil that part hasn't been broken. All of those are taken from WHO command and sorted per room/area (taken from map database). The only thing missing will be colors.

Santar

Need markwho and infamywho immediately.

Bluef

Maybe it's just me (could be, I am rather special) but I'm seeing a lot of people who are definitely not rogues (they're members of cities and Houses in some instances) show up as rogue. Anyone else experiencing this? It makes it really hard to determine who is actually a rogue for RP purposes.

Caladbolg

If the server is faster that's fine for everyone. Nothing sucks more in this game than lag.
Consider that most of the achaean population has Ndb

On the other hand i've had name highlighters since I first got my hands on zmud. (like 2002-2003) and I wouldn't play the game with out one.

On the other hand while it will take longer to honors everyone... It's not like your -always- doing something while in achaea. can easily run it while your standing afk in a city and be okay.

You don't need 20k names listed in your ndb and from my experience having that many names slows mudlet down majorly.

1.516s seems kinda long though I think 1.0 would be more reasonable if it's just to stop people from honours spamming.


Because you can tell us it takes up to much data for us to honors everyone. You can slow us down, but unless you remove honors entirely you can never stop us from collecting the information available to us.


Edit: Nevermind pointless rant

Sena

With graphical games, the client is able to do a lot of the work. The game doesn't have to send every single 3d model and texture to every player; instead, it (generally) sends instructions for the client to display graphics that are already on the player's computer (either from being installed or from being loaded ahead of time). Also, the client can often make certain assumptions, and guess at what will happen next even without any instruction from the game, so it can fill in the lag to some extent. There are other optimisations too.

In short, graphical games are often also just sending text (basically), and can do a lot of shortcuts and optimisations that Achaea can't.

Kuy

@Penwize mentioned this briefly, but my greatest concern is youngins.

If honors has an EQ cost, we're penalized for being considerate and checking the age/might/infamy/soldier status of a name we don't recognize. Instead of knocking ourselves off EQ for however long, I, for one, will probably just attack and ask questions later.

Vadimuses

I don't think it was a performance concern anymore because I have not need any performance-related improvements, and the admins have provided no data (or justification even) for the change. 

So just seem like a knee-jerk reaction to something that was working fine since 2013. Oh well, poor attitude to have but that's their take on this.

Conslo

Kuy said:

@Penwize mentioned this briefly, but my greatest concern is youngins.

If honors has an EQ cost, we're penalized for being considerate and checking the age/might/infamy/soldier status of a name we don't recognize. Instead of knocking ourselves off EQ for however long, I, for one, will probably just attack and ask questions later.

Along these lines, I've always felt HONOURS is supposed to be information available to adventurers intrinsically (hence previously having no balance or other consequences). So my character (I felt) is supposed to have a sort of... instinct as to other people's infamy, age, citizenship, relative 'might', etc.

But although I could look these things up on the fly whenever I wanted, I couldn't really have that information at the front of my head all the time. Tools like ndb and the highlighting allowed *me*, the person playing this character with otherworldly instincts about attributes of his fellow adventurers, to have that same sort of immediate insight into people's alliances, strength, and trustworthiness.

With this change, this sort of knowledge has moved from an instinct that is always and immediately available, to something that requires a conscious mental effort for each individual I want to know about. No longer can I see a group of individuals in a room somewhere and immediately know "Three targosians and two Mhaldorians? Either I'm about to see a deathsight or something fishy's going on." Instead I'd see that group, and knowing the five separate instances of effort I'd have to exert to know who these people are, I simply won't if I'm currently doing something.

So to me, this is more about the loss of one of the coolest pieces of instinct/magic in the game, something I saw as a huge opportunity for role play, and something that helped bridge the gap (at least I felt) experienced in information and environment when using a text medium. I can't remember lots of people and their relations, but I can remember red=Mhaldorian and blue=Ashtani.

If this is strictly a performance concern, and while @Vadimuses mention of lack of presented evidence is acute, I can empathise with it regardless. *But*, there are other solutions to a performance concern: already the idea of using a separate balance has been raised, this would accomplish the same goal, but help avoid removing the bit of magic I've grown to love. And the rift is available via gmcp, could this be too (though I acknowledge the effects there would be minimal, but further optimizations could be made, query multiple names at once, api limits, etc). Or (and this is my favorite option) perhaps make a more unmetered access available to a select party, on the condition that they build a system to allow players to get this information from them (mudlet specifically could fairly easily query a third party server for NDB information), caching to significantly reduce load on achaea. Hell if you put enough time into it you could stream changes to this service and it would never have to actually query for anything (I don't actually know how realistic this last idea is, I don't know what achaea's codebase looks like, but the former I imagine you could hook a separate process into the same database).

The per-city-qw brought back some of the magic. But citizenship is just one of many pieces of information gained through honours. Also some people are hidden from qw but I might see them via other skills (like walking past them).

@Sarapis So... I guess what I'm saying is I don't so much care about why you chose to solve this "problem", I personally love to solve, and regularly fight at work to solve, purely theoretical problems so we never have to actually deal with them. But why did you choose to solve it *this* way?

Ryldagh

Conslo said:
Along these lines, I've always felt HONOURS is supposed to be information available to adventurers intrinsically (hence previously having no balance or other consequences). So my character (I felt) is supposed to have a sort of... instinct as to other people's infamy, age, citizenship, relative 'might', etc.

...

But although I could look these things up on the fly whenever I wanted, I couldn't really have that information at the front of my head all the time. Tools like ndb and the highlighting allowed *me*, the person playing this character with otherworldly instincts about attributes of his fellow adventurers, to have that same sort of immediate insight into people's alliances, strength, and trustworthiness.

With this change, this sort of knowledge has moved from an instinct that is always and immediately available, to something that requires a conscious mental effort for each individual I want to know about. 

No longer can I see a group of individuals in a room somewhere and immediately know "Three targosians and two Mhaldorians? Either I'm about to see a deathsight or something fishy's going on." Instead I'd see that group, and knowing the five separate instances of effort I'd have to exert to know who these people are, I simply won't if I'm currently doing something.

Because this is a thing.  I walk down the street and I can tell where someone lives.  When I see them drive by, I can tell that they're from the city an hour's drive away.

What I'm getting out of this is ... it allowed you to pretend to have a better memory than you actually have.  I mean, if you can't immediately know where someone lives just by looking on them, then how are you ever to have to learn how to roleplay in the roleplaying enforced game?

Don't get me wrong, I used NDB.  I used it a LOT... but at no point in my life would I sit here and try to justify an inherent and instant knowledge about everyone as a logical IN CHARACTER capacity for any class other than a monk (which has telepathy as a class skill).

If you care enough about who someone is and where they live, then you care enough to remember "Salad Bowl is that Targossian, Vicious left Mhaldor and Mhaldor seems to be hemorrhaging people.

Caladbolg said:
If the server is faster ...
On the other hand ...
On the other hand ...

Just how many hands do you have, Caladbolg?

Personally, I'd love to see an honoursbalance, but I'm not going to hold my breath on it.

Mizik

Jesus bro. That's some real deep philosophy for playing video games. 

Achaea now has better graphics? Sweet. Would do honours balance in place of eq.

Alaskar

Is it really necessary for erroneous honors to have an EQ/Balance cost? I mean, I mistype a name and BAM, 1.5 seconds EQ/BAL lost. Also, honors using EQ or Balance or whatever sucks

Santar

To save people the convenience of the EQ problem while still keeping the intent of this change alive, why don't you make it where it only throttles your honorsing if you do a bunch?

Such as, if you cross a certain threshold of "honorsing too much", then it'll put a throttle on you for an hour, a day, or whatever.

That way people can still rapidly honors a few people if they're in a fight, or just checking things. Personally I type at 140 WPM, so it's really annoying to try to honors 2-3 people at once and get caught up by the EQ thing.

There's no need to punish people for legit use of the honors system, if the only thing you were trying to prevent was datamining.

@Sarapis

Aquil

command: grief
send("dor puppet command honor "..target)
pt feel free to devour ladies and gents.


In all seriousness I dislike it. I am very compulsive of honor'ing the same people over forty times a day. Doesn't matter if I just saw them, gotta honor to see if they rose 5% in might or turned another age old. Just one of those things that bothers me when I'm out hunting or walking around exploring. But when it all comes down to it, it's a game, and I'm sure I can find another compulsive things to do

Jakarana

I have very limited experience in this, and don't know the structure of Achaea's servers, but after reading through the thread and and hearing about the nature of auto-honor, look, and who systems, I'd be pretty pissed if my servers were getting spammed by automated systems designed to gather information that is partially-meta in nature.

Don't get me wrong, I like and love the Honours system as it is a useful tool for assessing people for potential mentors, and keeping track of your friends progress in bashing. I even found someone that both I and this character is infatuated with because of the Honours system.

But Systems designed to ping the credibility of the names of everyone in the room, to be gagged into info that feeds you the likelihood that anyone is to attack/mug/rob you, and if they are of an enemy city or organization, strikes me as a form of trigger and automation abuse.

Just take the equilibrium cost as the time and effort it takes to scan a crowded room or portion of a city market, and then search the collective consciousness (since everyone in Achaea is a form of telepath lore-wise, or at least was back in the age when your starting robes were purple) for people's global experiences and knowledge of them based on the appearance of their face and their name alone. Doing all of this instantaneously seems, as I said, seems like crossing into automation abuse territory, and enables some hefty meta-play and knowledge.

I think a decent Compromise for this is allowing exceptions to the equilibrium cost in three instances:

• Friends, Family, Rivals, Allies, Enemies and the like: Since these are people you would likely instinctually know enough about to shorten this "telepathic search"
• The person you have searched with Honours does not exist (e.g. misspelling someone's name)
• A Trait is added that removes the Equilibrium cost for Honours, named something along the lines of "Paranoid" knowing what it would be used for.

In the case of the suggested trait, it could be a Major, Minor, Or a Minor with a drawback (e.g. Five less friends, representative of a cautious paranoid person) as I don't know how severe the Devs view this capability.
But that's just my two cents.