Battlerage

Tharvis

@Kog : gmcp.Char.Vitals.charstats[2]
is what you're looking for. 

Sarathai

Bluef said:

...and then hunting old zones where I hunted on my way to dragon because I couldn't tank things in Azdun, Istarion, etc. anymore... 

I clear Azdun catacombs just fine. Takes me a bit longer, but I don't run into any real problems in the process (except, I will admit, for incessant shielding on some mobs). I hunt in dragonform and we're the same level (probably similarly artied, give or take), so I'd suggest trying to change up your pattern, rather than banging your head against the wall of an old pattern that obviously isn't working.

And when I tried clearing it with one other person, we shredded both Azdun and Tir in a bit under an hour.

Note: Would like to get the crit rates upped again, though, or alternately an increased speed for Gut/Incantation against denizens only. Dragon is plenty tanky, but the attack speed is too slow. I do think dragons (not dragon-level, but dragons specifically) should be the best bashers by at least some margin - not completely overpowered bashers, but the best.

Klendathu

To add to what @Kog was saying (because rage is already in GMCP), I'm already quite a long way through a Mudlet GUI that will have the five rage abilities for your class listed out. It will track rage, turning the abilities green when you have sufficient rage to use them, will animated timers displaying the cooldowns (once I gather all the trigger lines). For super-ease of use, the GUI elements will also be clickable buttons, so you don't even need to remember the specific commands.

The names will automatically update based on your class, respecting dragonform and colour where appropriate.

If anyone wants to contribute (trigger lines for abilities working, durations of afflictions on mobs, etc), please PM me.

It will not automatically use the rage abilities, if you want to automate that, you can do it for yourself.

Aktillum

Klendathu said:

To add to what @Kog was saying (because rage is already in GMCP), I'm already quite a long way through a Mudlet GUI that will have the five rage abilities for your class listed out. It will track rage, turning the abilities green when you have sufficient rage to use them, will animated timers displaying the cooldowns (once I gather all the trigger lines). For super-ease of use, the GUI elements will also be clickable buttons, so you don't even need to remember the specific commands.

Oh yeah? Well mine is going to look like an MMO action bar, with pictures for each skill that darken when they're on cooldown, and..and..stuff.

Klendathu

Aktillum said:

Klendathu said:

To add to what @Kog was saying (because rage is already in GMCP), I'm already quite a long way through a Mudlet GUI that will have the five rage abilities for your class listed out. It will track rage, turning the abilities green when you have sufficient rage to use them, will animated timers displaying the cooldowns (once I gather all the trigger lines). For super-ease of use, the GUI elements will also be clickable buttons, so you don't even need to remember the specific commands.

Oh yeah? Well mine is going to look like an MMO action bar, with pictures for each skill that darken when they're on cooldown, and..and..stuff.

Oh, I won't bother with mine then :P

Klendathu

Tharvis said:

@Kog : gmcp.Char.Vitals.charstats[2]
is what you're looking for. 

No, bad. Use this: http://forums.achaea.com/discussion/comment/257497/#Comment_257497

Kard

Overall I am fine with the changes. I do agree it gets a bit spammy now which is not ideal...but I think one of the main things that needs to be balanced is the offensive capabilities of mobs or their health.

There are a number of areas that are worthless/impossible to solo now even as a dragon with a ton of arties. Having to hit and run when there's two mobs in a room completely removes any fun for me. And as a dragon...I don't care about the experience, at this point it's just the gold, essence, and fun of hunting.

We're going to start having higher tier areas...without anyone in them unless you have a group of 5-10 dragons.

I respect that these changes need to be reviewed...but I'm hoping we can find a solution that doesn't completely destroy solo bashing (or make it painfully boring/tedious).

Aegoth

My only complaint is that I never seem to be criting anything anymore at all. Then again, I've only been killing the undead at Tasur'ke. Are those critable?

Tibitha

Aktillum said:

Klendathu said:

To add to what @Kog was saying (because rage is already in GMCP), I'm already quite a long way through a Mudlet GUI that will have the five rage abilities for your class listed out. It will track rage, turning the abilities green when you have sufficient rage to use them, will animated timers displaying the cooldowns (once I gather all the trigger lines). For super-ease of use, the GUI elements will also be clickable buttons, so you don't even need to remember the specific commands.

Oh yeah? Well mine is going to look like an MMO action bar, with pictures for each skill that darken when they're on cooldown, and..and..stuff.

Waaay ahead of you  

Sena

Aegoth said:

My only complaint is that I never seem to be criting anything anymore at all. Then again, I've only been killing the undead at Tasur'ke. Are those critable?

They aren't.

Ellodin

Tibitha said:

Waaay ahead of you  

how can you use leap of faith if you're not a greatsword user

edit: and symbol of wrath

Tibitha

Ellodin said:

Tibitha said:

Waaay ahead of you  

how can you use leap of faith if you're not a greatsword user

edit: and symbol of wrath

Well see, I put my shield down and then I kind of pretend to leap, but not really. It's a work in progress.

Ellodin

banish them with a swift kick to the shin

Tharvis

Klendathu said:

Tharvis said:

Kog : gmcp.Char.Vitals.charstats[2]
is what you're looking for. 

No, bad. Use this: http://forums.achaea.com/discussion/comment/257497/#Comment_257497

he asked where to find it, not how to extract it  

Sarapis

Kog said:

For anyone who doesn't want to code, it'll become trivial once rage gets added to GMCP. I already track based on a trigger, then try to send every attack I have enough rage for (collide, onslaught, bulwark, not in that order) - I just gag the extra spam and go on my merry way. I ensure high uptime on my buff, ensure I'm always throwing out damage on cooldown/resource (because saving it wastes DPS), and I'm overall better off because I have 2-3x the chance to crit when things come off cooldown. I'll allow that every class is different, and that some classes probably require more in-depth work than Runewarden does, but that's to be expected with any system.

Just a note that blindly sticking all your BR attacks on a single alias is not going to be effective after the next batch of BR changes, so be prepared for that!

Ihsiira

I just happened to give Achaea another shot a couple hours after this went in. It's awesome. I'd probably have gotten bored and continued to AFK in some other IRE mud otherwise.

Ahmet

Bluef said:

The one thing I still enjoyed about Achaea is now so overly complicated I can't even stand to discuss it but I'm dead for the 100th time today so I have a few minutes while I'm in Thoth's Halls so why not. IMO:

The willpower drain absolutely sucks. Shamans already have a major willpower drain due to curses. 

It takes so damn long to kill anything. I'm bored of hunting by denizen #5. Sure, the extra gold is nice, but...(maybe no one has figured this out yet) the longer the fight, the more curatives you'll end up buying in the end, so you're not really going to gain more overall. 

Denizen health pools are way too high. I am pretty damn artied and I'm still dying repeatedly to stupid things that are far lower than what I'd normally be hunting. Where's the new bashing guide to explain where I should go to hunt solo now?

The spam from hunting is terrible. I already had my attack and an echo + the swiftcurse counter. Now I have all that plus the battlerage crap. Each and every time I hit something. It was suggested that I gag it or config it off...but don't I need that? Oh and then someone else said add it to the prompt! My prompt already looks like this:

5847H (100%) 6190M (100%) 25880E 27440W Fisherman  NW|SW Level 104 & 28.2% exkdb-

Where exactly would I put it? Any more text there and it'll loop around to the next line. 

I also think that sugar-coating the introduction of this with Double Xp is skewing some opinion of how great this is going to be in the long-run. Yeah, I know...I'm a Debbie Downer, a Negative Nelly. Oh well. Hunting was something I could still enjoy in Achaea and now I just die every time I attempt it. I'm glad I got dragon already. 

Edit: Forgot to add that I'm not getting anywhere near the crits I used to (with my Level 3 Crit Pendant). 

But crit rates haven't been adjusted...

Ahmet

Bluef said:

Daeir said:

Typically speaking double the curatives used on a mob that has apparently triple the health that it used to have is really not all that surprising, especially given the base xp and the gold rewards themselves are almost doubled.

It's not surprising, no. But the gold reward is not really upped then either. You're going to use a larger portion of it to restock unless you've taken remedies/harvesting or their alchemic equivalents. 

Also, you've said this a couple times, but you're missing the point. The gold/xp you're earning over the same amount of time wasn't supposed to be upped. It's supposed to remain EXACTLY THE SAME. Bashing is just more immersive now.

Jules

I played around with battlerage briefly yesterday, but mostly listened to people chattering about it.  For now, I think I'll wait until admin makes some of their initial changes and irons out some of the new system kinks (especially since people seem to be dying a fair bit), and then try it out more extensively, just to see what it's like once it's working pretty much as admin intended.  

Initial kinks aside I really am concerned that the basic design of the system has probably actually raised the bar of required coding knowledge (and game mechanics, too), though, rather than lowered it - which I understood as part of the stated intent (making it easier/more palatable for players to be less automated).  

Part of why some people really like it, I think, is that it gives them some fresh coding challenges (as some have mentioned in their posts).  Once they solve those coding problems and update their sophisticated bashing systems, they'll be even more "set" than they ever were, because they'll be part of the now possibly even tinier minority that can "bash efficiently", while others may very well end up feeling like they're treading water even more than before.  But yeah, the proficient coder players are absolutely loving this, and most others are feeling left out in the cold right now from what I'm seeing.  

Sena

Jules said:

Initial kinks aside I really am concerned that the basic design of the system has probably actually raised the bar of required coding knowledge (and game mechanics, too), though, rather than lowered it - which I understood as part of the stated intent (making it easier/more palatable for players to be less automated).

As someone who does like the coding challenges it adds and is working an a bashing AI that's far more complex than necessary, I've been bashing 100% manual (just aliases, buttons, and serverside queueing) for the last 9-ish hours. I've been managing just fine with 0 automation (the only problem is that it's hard to properly manage enhancement/bolster at the same time as my offence, but there are things I could do to improve that without automation).

And that's group bashing against strong denizens, where I have to consider what my allies are doing, decide when to use damage or afflictions, decide whether the denizen I'm targeting will last long enough for my attacks to make a difference, and other complexities. Ordinary solo bashing is trivial, you really only have to worry about your two normal damage abilities most of the time, maybe one of your afflictions.

Sarathai

Daeir said:

It really hasn't. You can full manual BR stuff with absolutely no difficulty. Automation is just for lazy people like myself who desire the old hit button and bash thing to death approach.

This.

For reference purposes, my bashing "system" is three aliases (Gut, Incantation and Blast, and no dor in sight), and with Battlerage's introduction has increased to six aliases and some party echoes. I'll probably add a seventh alias (shock and horror!) when I can get around to it. So yeah, I agree that it isn't hard to use BR manually.

Tibitha

Yeah, I'm using F1 to smack and then five aliases for my BR abilities. My icons are just for display, to show me which aliases are available.

So nothing's triggered and I've made about a level and half this weekend already and having quite a bit of fun! (Both group and solo, though I enjoy group more just because of the paladin support ability.)

Sarapis

Daeir said:

It really hasn't. You can full manual BR stuff with absolutely no difficulty. Automation is just for lazy people like myself who desire the old hit button and bash thing to death approach.

Yes, you could map this to an Xbox controller and have buttons to spare it's so easy to manual. It's literally exactly like many bashing systems in games where you're firing off abilities with varying cooldowns.

Jules

For the last few posts... that doesn't seem to be how a lot of people are experiencing the changes.  The same people who are PK Gods are loving it, and a lot of other people seem to be floundering.  Even people like Kinilan, who are probably somewhere below Santar, Jhui and Jarrod (but still lightyears ahead of most people) are saying (paraphrasing just a bit) "to do this right, you'd need a system, weren't we trying to sort of move away from systems".  

EDIT:  that said, I am not saying "scrap it".  You already made it, and a certain segment of players seems to really like it.  Why take it away entirely?  But, I am saying that a lot of other people are feeling pretty left out.  

Sarapis

They're incorrect.

Santar

I literally just turned my bashing alias into gut/psiblast/overwhelm for solo bashing.

I'm sure that's not 100% optimal, but it's pretty good.

Klendathu

For the record, the coding I'm doing is to make it easier to track when you have sufficient battlerage to use an ability, not that it will automatically use it for you.

Makes me laugh to the bottom of my stomach that the same people saying bashing was boring are now complaining that it's too hard.

Bluef

Sarathai said:

Bluef said:

...and then hunting old zones where I hunted on my way to dragon because I couldn't tank things in Azdun, Istarion, etc. anymore... 

I clear Azdun catacombs just fine. Takes me a bit longer, but I don't run into any real problems in the process (except, I will admit, for incessant shielding on some mobs). I hunt in dragonform and we're the same level (probably similarly artied, give or take), so I'd suggest trying to change up your pattern, rather than banging your head against the wall of an old pattern that obviously isn't working.

And when I tried clearing it with one other person, we shredded both Azdun and Tir in a bit under an hour.

Note: Would like to get the crit rates upped again, though, or alternately an increased speed for Gut/Incantation against denizens only. Dragon is plenty tanky, but the attack speed is too slow. I do think dragons (not dragon-level, but dragons specifically) should be the best bashers by at least some margin - not completely overpowered bashers, but the best.

I appreciate your thoughts, Sarathai. 

But I would rather watch paint dry than hunt in dragon form. It's terribad. Seriously. I don't get why you people are lauding something that is so dull and slow you could probably finish half a console game in the time it takes to clear an area. Ick. Maybe it's different play styles, but that is not "fun" to me. I absolutely agree: Gut/incantation need a speed boost. That small change could make a huge difference. 

The thing is, I don't hunt with anyone. I never have. I didn't from 0-99 and I don't think I'll suddenly start enjoying it now. I hate the inane chatter. I hate the delays. I hate that people pull me off balance constantly. I hate that you either have to lead the group or follow along aimlessly. That too is not "fun" to me. Moreover, who would I hunt with? I'm a rogue without the ability to find PUG for hunting and that's not going to change for a variety of reasons. 

Ahmet said:

Also, you've said this a couple times, but you're missing the point. The gold/xp you're earning over the same amount of time wasn't supposed to be upped. It's supposed to remain EXACTLY THE SAME. Bashing is just more immersive now.

I hate to say I told you so, but...I will. 

I respect that these changes are here to stay and acknowledge that they need to be reviewed (perhaps with a it more earnest when someone keeps reporting the same serious bug after its dismissed without explanation)...but I'm hoping there are more changes coming that:

a) don't completely destroy solo bashing (or make it even more painfully boring/tedious and
b) don't further complicate hunting for those who can't code and don't want to use technology to problem-solve their experience
c) clarify where everyone should be hunting now since the old bashing guide is clearly out the door. 

Sarapis

Santar said:

I literally just turned my bashing alias into gut/psiblast/overwhelm for solo bashing.

I'm sure that's not 100% optimal, but it's pretty good.

See my post on the last page though!

Jacen

I haven't gotten to test battlerage out whatsoever yet, but I'm a bit confused by the couple of people who said they are having an easier time bashing denizens that were tough before the changes. Pre-changes, you didn't need to be able to survive a room indefinitely in order to bash efficiently - you only needed to survive it for the 30ish seconds to knock off a denizen or two. With denizen health scaled upwards (threefold I think I read?) it seems it would be necessary to survive a room indefinitely  in order to bash efficiently now. Are the introduced denizen afflictions debilitating enough to counter the increase in time and actually make it easier to survive?