Slowing down combat

Kiet

Movement would be a big issue, but not sure bashing couldn't just be retuned to stay mostly the same xp/h.

Dochitha

If that 200ms escape window is slowed down, say doubled, more people will survive finishers, that's not quite a problem until it's slowed to say 500ms or 800ms window, now almost everyone will escape a finisher. Then, people can't kill well, skills needs to be adjusted, it becomes a problem again.

Kiet

Properly designed combat shouldn't rely on people reacting within a 200ms window imo

Jhui

it's not really about reacting, it's about predicting

Kiet

In which case making it 500 ms isn't going to make a big difference.

Xinna

Valkyn said:

@Kiet I've always been terrible at those sort of games. Or anything that requires quick reaction times. It's all very well saying 'you can learn it, I can, and this guy did', but some people are just MUCH better at this than others, just like with everything else. Yes with a lot of effort I could probably get competent at serpent combat, (I doubt I could ever be great) but is it worth that frustration? Probably not! I've managed other classes okay, but not serpent.

I have a friend who is very very good with reacting to stuff quickly, some people are just naturally good, some people are naturally bad. I remember someone tipped over a drink when we were at burger king once as teenagers and he got himself and his bag out of the way before the drink spilled. He'd moved before I'd even processed what had happened. If I was in that seat, I would have been drenched.

My skills lie in other areas, but it's a bit frustrating when the only option to some classes seems to be to script the hell out of them offensively as well as defensively. I accept this is how things are, but if given the option to vote for slowing it down a bit, hell yes I would!

This has been said, but I'll add my own comment, just in case it helps at all.

I am horrible at reacting quickly. I am not one of those people you describe with great reflexes. I do well at Achaean combat.

It's really not about reaction time. You are just looking at it with the wrong mindset. It's about predicting. So, you go into the fight thinking "if they cure paralysis over everything else I am going to hit alias x, then y, then z." "If they cure asthma first..." Then you do a stab to figure out what they cure first and go for it!

As you practice more and more, you develop contingencies for all prio swaps, tree, active curing, etc. But none of it needs to be thought of as 'reaction speed.' It just might seem that way if you haven't done enough pre-planning. If I've fought someone before and they don't change anything, I can tell you exactly how I'm going to kill them before the fight even begins.

You need to make sure your aliases are easy to type too and hit them a bit to get that muscle memory. The reactive element is when something stops your plan like you got hindered and your attack didn't hit. You can't just mindlessly press buttons. You have to -notice- that your attack didn't hit and redo. But it doesn't even matter all that much how -fast- you notice. Faster is better, sure, but you'll still do well if you react slowly. All about anticipation.

Aerek

I've always compared Achaean combat to chess. In Achaea, like chess, there are basically a finite number of "good" moves to make in any situation, and people who enjoy combat study those moves, just like chess players study openings and closings. You didn't lose the game at the checkmate, you lost the game when you let the other guy get into the Lucena position, the rest was just formality. In Achaea, you have to think "He's a Monk, so he's going to prep both legs, double break them, and AXK or BBT me". Since you know that going in, the more you train yourself to see what the other guy is doing, the more warning you have that those pivotal moments are coming up, and you're ready for it when they do.

I can understand and sympathize with the "speed of combat" complaint. Combat has definitely gotten "faster" over time, and there -are- some classes that give you some very small margins for error, but really it's just about getting to understand the mechanics. Learning your class is important to be able to kill the other guy, but surviving is about learning about their class, and seeing the finishers coming before you have to react, like Jhui and Xinna have said. Can't only be thinking about your side of the fight and expect to survive theirs.

Antidas

Antonius said:

You'd also have to slow down denizen attacks so they're not out of proportion to curing balances. If you're attacking less frequently everything would take longer to kill and your experience gained per unit of time would drop. Plenty of people don't like PvE much as it is, imagine if it suddenly took twice as long to gain X%.

You could decrease their overall health proportionally to solve this problem. It would then take just as long as it takes now, only with less attacks being necessary to kill something. @Jarrod has a point about the movement stuff though, I hadn't considered that aspect of it.

Aepas

I have to agree that what @Jarrod said poses the biggest problem to any time combat was possibly slowed down. People would have much larger windows to run away, even if combat itself was mostly unchanged by a % increase. That in itself is actually a huge problem. A few other things popped up too like Aeon/Retard and sleep times. Those would have to be somewhat adjusted if anything at all changed.

I think the real issue comes from the truth that Combat has only gotten faster or "Combat has definitely gotten "faster" over time" @Aerek .
This is just the truth of the game we play, and while it has been balanced around theoretical times or incredibly fast pings, it is actually detrimental to people with highier pings, especially in things such as shaman when your average ping is about half the time of a swiftcurse. (I run at about 280-350ms) despite your ability to predict things, some people may have smarter curing that won't quite give you the chance to react properly between applying afflictions and seeing them cured, or having a few tenths of a second while you change things up, unless you are scripting.

In the past 5 years or so, there has still been a large increase in affliction tracking and applying proper afflictions based on what a person is curing, instead of the older version of using alias' to apply specific afflictions at a given time. I personally think this is somewhat problematic but it most lies with shaman, serpent, apostate, and dualcutting knights. Before class changes it was happening heavily with knights and sentinels.

Bashing would obviously not be a real problem because we only use 1 to 2 attacks for bashing anyways. Time could remain as it is against denizens, or their health could be proportionally lowered by the speed that is decreased. 

The game has been balanced for the past 10+ years based certain in game balances, mainly the curing system or curing balances. We have seen some attacks gain up to 33% balance time (serpents) and we have seen knights find a meta in the fastest possible affliction speed, which is part of why they had to be broken up into multiple classes.

Right now I see knights as having the most balance between slow and fast attacks, while still being viable, but a lot of classes simply rely on speed. I think a lot of classes could use a restructure, as long as a change to curing and attack speeds. 

Jarrod

It's possible to be an absolute top tier PKer without tracking or anything. @Jarrel has one of the common systems for defense and absolutely nothing for offense except being Jarrel and aliases. Dude is the worst coder and I know he doesn't use anyone else's system (It took me way to long to setup a single alias for him so he could use different hew/underhand etc with a single alias).

Now, that's not saying anyone could do that. Jarrel is an absolute monster and easily one of the top PKers the game has ever had. Just saying that it's possible, but you definitely have to have a very solid grasp of curing/mechanics and fast reactions.

Froh

Kiet said:

Valkyn said:

No, it doesn't. It helps, but only with things you can predict you're going to need to use before you need to use them. Otherwise you're adding your ping to your reaction time.

His example was just for bashing/dps--there's no situation where bashing dps isn't predictable.

Sure, it's predictable, but there's still a big advantage to automation.

Even aside from damage rate, running an automapper which knows exactly which set of commands to send at which timing to execute the desired escape route if things go south is a big help.

There's a reason that everyone started using systems, particularly Vadi's: a small marginal advantage adds up big in the long run: over a PK career, or time to level to dragon, or what have you.

And the prevalence of systems, as others have said, led to balancing the game around perfect reflexes and consistency rather than very good reflexes and consistency as a human might achieve.
 
By perfect I mean the ability to execute the planned healing, not that it automatically grants you perfect knowledge of the optimal way to cure and what have you in a given situation, although for most players something like Vadisystem pushed them a lot up that curve as well.

Borran

For the experienced combatant, speed doesn't seem to be an issue. For most of the classes I used to play,  missing a balance did not completely lose your progress. However, if you're a newbie playing an affliction class without speed enhancing artifacts, you're going to have a hard time.  

Borran

That being said, a practice mode with slower balances would be great for those players, even with the extra time to escape,  that's better for youngins learning.