Random Achaea Thoughts

Xinna

It is very difficult to draw a line to indicate exactly what "offensive automation" is, and depending on where the line is drawn, some classes would be put at a severe disadvantage.

For example, I wouldn't consider myself "automated", but technically, I am in some sense, if any use of triggers is "automation." I played serpent for years with no (offensive) automation at all because serpent doesn't require it - it's just simple one command attacks. I mean, I used aliases and macros obviously. No need for triggers or variables.

But as bard, fighting without any sort of "automation" at all would be very annoying. For example, I use a limb tracker. Does that make me automated? I also auto-tunesmith, in a sense. I manually select which tunesmith I want to use with a toggle (martellato/pesante/accentato) and then my aliases automatically incorporate the one I toggled it to into each alias, once the target is undeaf. But this is all additional stuff that most affliction classes don't have to deal with at all. We're not talking about the afflictions themselves - the most important part. So, in reality, I'm fighting with literally the same amount of typing as I would be using fully manual as serpent, alchemist, or apostate (I've played all three, and never really felt the need to automate anything).

Especially before class queueing was a thing, controlling the different balances of voice and jab was also obviously something that would be much more difficult than a class that just does two afflictions on one balance, if you had to handle it all separately, rather than simply having a combo that jabs one thing and queues a voice to your next voice balance.

I'm someone who can't really play the game with an aff tracker and one alias, because I think that's boring, but I think it'd be hard to draw a line between that and a number of other things that really help to balance the classes against each other.

That being said, I also entirely disagree with the notion that one must offensively automate to be a top fighter in today's Achaea. Defensive automation is required, sure, but you can compete just fine fully manual offensively, particularly if you are playing one of the large number of classes that is well suited for it.

If you really want to remove the barrier of scripting, it'd be better to just make the problematic classes function in such a way that it doesn't -require- automation to utilize it well. Compare jester juggling, for example, where you're throwing daggers every .3 to .5 seconds and need to type REALLY fast to afflict perfectly without automation (and thus everyone who plays it automates it), with serpent. People automate serpent too, but there are people who do just fine without doing so, and, frankly, you can fight exactly just as well without doing so. The speed of afflictions is slow enough to handle manually. Scripting won't be a barrier or an advantage if either scripting or manualing is an option because the speed makes both possible.

Aepas

in my eyes, automation is just when you are unable to decide for yourself.

When I was a serpent, I had tons of alias and macros for dstabs and illusions, and I did quite well for myself. was a top tier, not at all. But I had a ton of fun doing it.

Now, automation lies in the fact that you as a person are now unable to anticipate or figure out what is going on. So the people that add a pre-venom tracker are like this. While in the old days, you had to dstab or dsl several times and anticipate their defensive curing. you knew that it would take 3 hits to lapse a herb, so accidentally hitting with a venom they already had was hugely detrimental to you as the offensive.
Today, you can just hit F1 with a good venom tracker and venomer, and you'll eventually work towards a lock. Granted this is not 100% but it takes that human element right out of it.

I had made a script for 2h that tracked parry and if it said parry right leg, hit left leg, etc etc. I eventually got rid of this out of a foolish kind of self-righteousness because I feel like if I can not accurately discern a parried limb, even when the game lets me, then I deserve to hit a parried limb. So, I just highlighted the parried limb and try my best to avoid it. It's not that bad.

Passive curing is a-okay to me, always has been. The game has always appeared to be designed around .1-.2 second executions, at least as old serpent and old knight. So even if curing was 100% spot on, you still had a chance to kill them. This is to me why defensive automation was alright. if you were perfect, you deserved your kill.

However, if you react in ways offensively that change how you as a person would be able to react normally, or guard you from making bad choices, then it is automation. For instance, if I fat finger my keys and hit hew right leg, but it is parried, and my system changes it to hew left leg... well that doesn't make me better. I still messed up. I just had a crutch that fixed what I did wrong before even I knew what was happening. This is the fault of automation to me. to artificially fix your mistakes, to artifically make you better, to bypass an enemies ability to change defences. If you have the right skills, you can make a persons ability to think about defences more or less null and void. Your offensive automation removes some of the defensive play that should exist.

also automating ranged is annoying. getting suddenly hit by 5-7 ranged attacks in the span of .2 seconds or less is just demoralizing.

Exelethril

I think offensive automation can be defined as the point where all elements of choice/reaction time/user input has been replaced by code to remove mistakes/inefficiencies, which grant an unnatural edge in group combat especially for various reasons.

Personally, I'm okay with automation unless on a broken class like occultist. I just wouldn't derive any form of satisfaction by letting something else play the game for me just for the sake of winning.

Linton

Prythe said:

Yet, I have watched Achaea morph away from an environment rich in many different ways to play into something akin to a FPS except it is a Team FPS.

..........

I won't create/play an alias and abandon my character like so many others because it is easier to do things that way....

..........

I feel like everything, there are two sides. On one end, you have players, like yourself, who treasures continuity of the world's history. You probably want things to make sense, to respect the chain of cause and effect triggered by 'real' events that feel real, progressive and not conjured out of thin air. However not everyone's focus for a game to is on those things. Many are more interested in other things that Achaea offers. I feel that with the passing of time, your cause gets more and more erm doomed? Up to a certain point, I think you just have to accept that fact and try to stop fighting a fight you can't win, perhaps for your own peace of mind.

On the second part of what you said,

If Cyrene is a haven for those who wants a different environment from the pvp focused 'factionized' cities, then I wonder if it is such a bad idea for the city to open itself up to forestal classes now that Eleusis is polarized. I believe a good portion of -new- players attracted to the idea of playing a Nature loving character probably aren't really going into it for the aggression. This may also make things fairer too, as Eleusis will have to be more accountable for what it does to itself if its population is no longer sustained by a monopoly of three classes and the widely popular Nature fantasy theme drawing in new players. At this time, Only Mhaldor has a similar advantage with class (apostate and infernal) but bear in mind that the Evil theme is naturally polarized by default which means people who play those classes are probably where they want to be.

Despite saying all that,.forestals living in a city though? This 'solution' is probably not ideal. But then many things aren't.

Aktillum

I used to be so heavily involved in Achaea PvP but I pretty much gave up altogether these past couple years because of the sheer complexity of scripting these days. I absolutely miss the days of having a ton of aliases on the old Java client, even if trying to manually cure against Occie ents back then was suicide.

Trying to put together a Bard offense with my very limited coding knowledge was a crash-course in how some of these classes are pretty much designed around millisecond windows of opportunity that my feeble .331 ping can't capitalize on, even with server-side queuing.

I don't think automation would be such a problem if high-level PvP wasn't a battle of pings, fighting for those milliseconds of opportunity.

I realize we're mostly talking about things like affliction trackers that automatically dstab venoms based on what your opponent already has, but this high-level automation is a byproduct of high-level defensive automation. Back in the day, you could dstab the wrong venom and still have room for error because they weren't automatically curing. Nowadays, your precious millisecond-window-of-opportunity needs to line up perfectly as you're racing the clock versus their automated healing. The two definitely go hand in hand.

A simple solution would be to slow down Achaea combat, too many skills are based around .5ms - 1.6s reactions from the player, which pretty much urges people to write these automated scripts that leave no room for human error. People would obviously still automate but people would have a lot more room to go manual. Of course this likely isn't an option but yeah.

Makarios

To address the point earlier in this thread that suggested we assume optimal playing when doing classleads/class revamps/etc, that's incorrect.

If we balanced in that way, the number of people who could make the class work (and have fun doing it) would be extremely low. I'm of the opinion (not sure if Tecton/Sarapis agree, this is entirely my personal view) that that's poor design and massively encourages automation, which I think incredibly cheapens the experience. We do take into account the maximum capability of a class (as in, this is the maximum output you can achieve), but we never assume that everyone is playing to that level.

If classes require automation to be affective, that's a massive failing and I'm pretty sure we'd be very receptive to changing them to not.

Amranu

I think most automation will generally be seen on affliction classes that have more than one input every 2 seconds or so to decide afflictions. There is not a single Shaman in the game that PvPs without affliction tracking and automated curse choosing for at least some of their offense, although I imagine there's also no Shaman that has anything like a "one-button" win that will always achieve what they want in any scenario.

Personally I have about 8 or so different cursing scripts, which all have various goals in mind - e.g. kelp stacking, mental afflicts under impatience, general hinder, mana drain, and of course a script that goes for a truelock are some of them. But often for the actual kill I often find myself going manual, and vodun is completely manual for me, not integrated into these scripts at all. Additionally it should be noted that I am choosing which script to use for every single curse, so I'm not just pushing a button and doing nothing while several curses in a row are automated for me.

 I think the problem isn't particularly affliction tracking, but classes in which there is little to no variety of human input necessary. Many like to point at Occultist unravel setups as being the epitome of easy to automate, with very little input necessary against most opponents and quick reactions necessary to manual what is a very linear process.

I honestly think the best choice for Achaea is to realize that this automation exists, and ensure that classes do not have easily achievable single paths to victory, but multiple different victory conditions with varying pre-requisites. I feel like Shaman in it's current form is an example of a class that while almost universally automated, also can not just push one button and sit back and relax until they win, as they still needs to adapt their strategy based on the moves of their opponent.

Hellen

I think the main reason automation is so common is simply due to the nature of the game itself. It is a fast-paced, complex game. Very fast, in comparison to some other MUDs out there. I don't think that when people say "Manual", they truly mean "type everything out", because that wouldn't be fair to ask people to do. There are multiple kinds of balances that need to be exploited, some classes even adding on more kinds of balances!

Can you cure an affliction, amalgamate intoxicant, increase its potency, increase its stability, increase its volatility, use homunculus corrupt, temper a humour, educe iron at someone, and then wrack them in quick succession? I know I can't.

The game itself inspires automation simply due to the sheer speed you need to work at. Yes, perhaps you could type out everything, but it would be better to use aliases or keybinds. Because without those, you wouldn't be using your existing balances in time to really benefit. Then there's the other side, where affliction classes would be extremely powerful because of the sheer speed at which they can afflict. Try to manually cure and your offense is gimped.

Basically, the game itself would need to be slowed down or made less complex to give true manual a better chance. Which would drive a lot of people away, simply because they -like- that complexity and speed. It would intrinsically change Achaea if that happened.

Of course, that's just true manual. I don't think anyone would really be serious for championing that unless the above scenario actually occurred.

Sarapis

Orzaansyn said:

Jules said:

Orzaansyn, what are you getting at?  I mean, it's good to start from the strictest definition of automation and work from there to define different levels and categories of it and then talk about what is and isn't too much (and whether anything can be done about it).  I'm not totally sure if that is your point or not. 

My point was simply to state what automation is and is not. My precedent messages were not about if it is bad, good, too much or not enough.

And be certain that server side curing has been a blessing for me, I am even able to fight and defend raids from my phone with it.

Gotta admit, I would love to see a video of you fighting on your phone!

Mannimar

@SarapisIf all automation gets the boot, I would no longer be able to play Achaea. Not because of combat, I haven't actively participated since pre-occie changes, but because I have paralysis.

Scripts have made Achaea one of very few games on PC that I can actually play, and keep up with the player base. I have scripts for the mundane all the way to combat macros, but I don't have anything that chooses how I fight (the few times I do.), and removing any of that would prevent me from being able to participate in those aspects of Achaea. 

The centennial events already make me feel like crap because there's no way I can participate in a good portion due to typing speed. I know I'm a member of a small demographic of your game, but things like scripts actually allow us to immerse ourselves in the game without screaming in frustration at what we can't do efficiently. 

Sarapis

@Mannimar As discussed already, there's no way to ban all automation, so you have little to worry about there. We'd be targeting, if we did, specific kinds of automation whose existence lends themselves to being detected. Much automation, like client-side affliction tracking that then relies on people to manually attack (as a non-trivial example), is for all intents and purposes undetectable.

Morthif

Client side affliction tracking has made me much less a newb at combat. Being legally blind I just can't keep up with the flying text. I'm not blind enough to need a screen reader and have no idea how the legendary Tanris and others managed it.

That being said my offense is no where near 1 button automated. I have a dozen or more macros and a bunch of aliases to be this bad

Mannimar

What does that mean though? I know you said a little about the server side queuing, but that was set up for people with crappy pings like many players in Asia. My understating is that the queue system is only as fast as the average ping of an American player. Yes, there are some universal benefits, but wouldn't using queues like that be better on the server than someone hitting a macro until it goes through? I'm not a fan of queuing simply because I like being in control, but I think it does more good than bad for a large portion of the players

Aktillum

@Hellen nailed what I was trying to say in my post. The PvP scene is far too complex for people not to automate some portions of their offense. Curing systems are so advanced today that you need to track multiple things with mere millisecond windows (often .2 - .6ms is the difference between securing and failing a lock) to beat them, something humans really cannot do in their head (unless they're a 12yo prodigy like @Ayoxele). Maybe if we all had cybernetic implants in our fingertips and could press 8 macros a second. There's too much room for error when you get into complex classes like Serpent or Bard, when you're up against (nearly) flawless curing systems.

Of course I'm still not in favour of automated offense, just pointing out something that needs consideration.

Sarapis

This discussion is going to seem fairly ironic after a coming announce post.

Rip

You implemented server side affliction tracking?

Herenicus

I note that the rhetorical pillow forts of "not fully-automated" and "not one-touch" begs the question: how many keystrokes should it take to wax somebody? The implications for group combat are even worse. What is to stop someone from reflexing his bros to follow him to the clouds, execute a support script, microwave pizza rolls, and return to base?

Prythe

Linton said:

Prythe said:

Yet, I have watched Achaea morph away from an environment rich in many different ways to play into something akin to a FPS except it is a Team FPS.

..........

I won't create/play an alias and abandon my character like so many others because it is easier to do things that way....

..........

I feel like everything, there are two sides. On one end, you have players, like yourself, who treasures continuity of the world's history. You probably want things to make sense, to respect the chain of cause and effect triggered by 'real' events that feel real, progressive and not conjured out of thin air. However not everyone's focus for a game to is on those things. Many are more interested in other things that Achaea offers. I feel that with the passing of time, your cause gets more and more erm doomed? Up to a certain point, I think you just have to accept that fact and try to stop fighting a fight you can't win, perhaps for your own peace of mind.

On the second part of what you said,

If Cyrene is a haven for those who wants a different environment from the pvp focused 'factionized' cities, then I wonder if it is such a bad idea for the city to open itself up to forestal classes now that Eleusis is polarized. I believe a good portion of -new- players attracted to the idea of playing a Nature loving character probably aren't really going into it for the aggression. This may also make things fairer too, as Eleusis will have to be more accountable for what it does to itself if its population is no longer sustained by a monopoly of three classes and the widely popular Nature fantasy theme drawing in new players. At this time, Only Mhaldor has a similar advantage with class (apostate and infernal) but bear in mind that the Evil theme is naturally polarized by default which means people who play those classes are probably where they want to be.

Despite saying all that,.forestals living in a city though? This 'solution' is probably not ideal. But then many things aren't.

Many good points, Linton. I really am tired of beating my head against a wall, but sometimes I squirrel tangentially when on a different topic.  This most recent squirrel was because I only just found out that I was not able to grove rezz a soul because I did not belong to an X type org. From an RP standpoint, that simple does not make sense so I was writing about RP and blurted. But, you are right.

I agree with you about "Forestals" needing options, and that ultimately that would benefit the gaming environment, and, as you noted, ensure a bit more "accountability."  

The split/bar no longer makes sense. The "conflict" was artificially created as between Alchemists and Concoctionists, not about or by classes. Now anybody can have either of those skill sets. Somebody living in Mhaldor can learn the trade skills of Harvesting and Brewing, and that's all right? No conflict with the Alchemists now? It doesn't make sense, and I am really at a loss as to why that has not been changed.

Imagine the rich RP possibilities .... "I will always love Nature, but evil calls to me! Muah!"  or "I want to retire to a Garden. Hello Cyrene!" or "I want to help rebuild Hashan, as my Guild once lived there." (Those are global possible, not personal scenarios.)

Even though I agree with you about Forestals / City - at least the Druid ones - for years Druid Guild/House RP was "No cities for us, too much politics!" then suddenly, "Have to be in a City, IRE thinks it will be a better gaming environment. Uh, really? Over ten years of solid beliefs tossed away because .... why? (And I haven't been a member of Druids for over ten years, so the change did not affect me personally, but it sucked nonetheless.)  

But if one could justify a move to a city via RP/IC then at least the game would be working for them. 

Goodness, wouldn't some old-fashioned RP be fun!

Rip

I don't think I ever waiting for an announce post before...this is scary and intriguing all at the same.

Kez

Any eta?
Like... should I stop spamming NSTAT?

Exelethril

Well, this snowballed another way and wasn't my original intent for this thread  My OP was a shower thought.

Rip

Nah, @Exelethril, your thread is cool...just all random thoughts are about combat automation.

Rip

I don't know who frightens me more, Shaitan, Lazarus...or @Sarapis.  4308 announcement of the year??

Edit: forgot a word...

Tharvis

..this is about the first time I refreshed a page (website news page) every thirty seconds just to see if a post was made. Gdi

Prythe

Deja random thought: Poker. 

If Achaea had poker I would never have to leave my house.

Rip

There's no poker in Achaea?  I had no idea, I know there is chess and blackjack...

Another random thought, wish decayed items were grouped...

Jacen

There's poker in Thera, but I think it's been said that its currently bugged.

Rip

Is it like 5 card draw or??  

Kez

You can buy a deck of cards in any casino and play damn near any card game you want. Except war.

Rip

Random Thought: All new players should start at the age of 1, and use cry (instead of tell)...crawl instead of walking...thoughts?