Auto-following target calls is bad, somehow, I guess

Reisen

So I have a trigger where I can designate a single person in party chat to follow the targets of, e.g. automatically targeting Bob if someone in party says "target Bob." Anyway, there was a mini-argument over this and there were a few points raised over why it's apparently a bad thing.

Them: You can illusion party calls!
Me: I can make my trigger recognize my partytell colour.
Them: But party sticks and hocus pocus can illusion in colour!
Me: They also give a message, so I can make the trigger disregard the call if the illusion message precedes it.
Them: But monks can mind command the target caller!
Me: Then I can set up a target blacklist in a table so that I don't automatically target people listed in the table, which would also solve the illusion problem.
Them: But then you have to go and edit the table! How can you dig into thousands of lines of code mid-combat?
Me: My entire system is sorted into folders that I can click to in a couple seconds.
Them: But it's still bad! You have to use your own judgement and reaction time instead of scripting everything!

Any opinions? To me, this seems like the archaic "scripts are bad, real pros manual everything" mindset that a select few people across IRE still seem to have. I'd hate to tell them that I can put my entire offense on a single keybind and just mash that until my target's dead, but hey.

Frederich

Pretty sure that forcing people to change targets with auto-targetting in group combat is actually shrubbable.

pretty sure.

Sena

Frederich said:

Pretty sure that forcing people to change targets with auto-targetting in group combat is actually shrubbable.

pretty sure.

It's not, forcing and illusioning party target calls are both perfectly acceptable.

Reisen

Why would it be shrubbable? It's a viable combat tactic.

Krypton

????

Every-fuckin'-body uses auto-target calls.

Reisen

Krypton said:

????

Every-fuckin'-body uses auto-target calls.

I think what they're afraid of is that people can be tricked into targeting the wrong thing, which is why they say "use your judgement". And I will use my judgement -- to make a table blacklisting my party from being targeted, which will stop 100% of attempts to make me target things I shouldn't target!

Sena

In my (noncom) opinion, as long as you have a proper system in place with the necessary checks* rather than a simple autotarget trigger, I don't see any problem. People autotarget every day, and it's not often abused.

*If you already have something that tracks information on people (like NameDB), not targeting citymates/allies is pretty simple to do. Even if you have to manually curate a list, you can still manage it quickly and easily with aliases and triggers (like "notarget sena" to add Sena to your list of disallowed targets, or checking pwho/cwho/allies and automatically adding everyone there to the list).

If you do want to avoid automation and allow for judgement on every call, have an alias/keybinding that switches your target to the last called target. So you can see the target called, and switch to it with a couple keypresses.

Frederich

It's not a viable combat tactic because, from what I hear, people used to abuse the shit out of it.

Group combat is BS and you need targets to be called.  Ask @Draqoom for the story, but it's really not okay to do, and if people are doing it, ya'll should prolly issue it.

Reisen

Frederich said:

It's not a viable combat tactic because, from what I hear, people used to abuse the shit out of it.

Group combat is BS and you need targets to be called.  Ask @Draqoom for the story, but it's really not okay to do, and if people are doing it, ya'll should prolly issue it.

It's so easy to code a means to ignore the illusion, though. There's no need to issue over something only noobs will fall for.

Calira

Combat related AI makes a lot of people uncomfortable for a variety of reasons, some of which are misinformed, and others that are entirely valid. If you personally like to go script-heavy then that's your business, but it's often best to do so privately. If you choose to flaunt it in a public manner then don't be surprised if people aren't tremendously pleased.

As for this specific instance, I think that auto-targeting is a pretty tame example of combat AI, and I didn't see you being attacked quite as much as you perceived. Aside from a handful of misinformed concerns, people were just suggesting that you try to fit in with the Achaean norm and go for a more manual approach. Of course you're free to disagree, but I wouldn't classify it as an attack.

I'd love to see any sort of documentation or anywhere that an official figure has commented on those sort of illusions being discouraged, or an example of anyone being shrubbed/punished/issued for using them. Otherwise, that sounds like a baseless rumour

Krypton

This was a statement from 2012 on the issue:

Message #1346 Sent by Anytus
1/14/16:50 Greetings! In response to your issue #62129, which raised the question "Would a person
making an illusion that was crafted to appear as another personal talking across telepathic channels
be considered OOC?", illusions are legal when they are of IC tells. As noted in HELP PARTIES, party
channels may sometimes be OOC, and our current policy is targetting party calls (and the parties
formed for that purpose) are OOC by their nature. Therefore, those illusions are of OOC-information
and thus illegal. We do encourage you to IDEA any suggested changes to this policy, though, to be
considered in future revisions. Thanks for your assistance, and please let us know if you have any
further questions!

"Party tells OOC, cannot be illusioned."

Armali

In 2012 we had a different producer though, things might've changed quite a bit since then. It's good to keep afresh of these policies. Someone take one for the team!

Nicola

A long time ago an issue was won over an illusion of a pt target call, this decision was then widely discussed and was rescinded within a week or two.

So long as an illusion can be seen to be in character, this includes seeking to lead your opponent into disarray by illusioning a passable facade of their raid leader's command, we have no problem with it.

Reisen

According to HELP OOC, party tells are considered in-character, so ᖍ(ツ)ᖌ

Edit: Whoops, just saw Nicola's post. I have the awareness of a turnip, I swear.

Sena

Krypton said:

This was a statement from 2012 on the issue:

Cardan later said that the ruling was a bad one and should have been appealed (and Sarapis liked that post, which I'd take to imply his agreement). It would be pretty ridiculous to consider target calling (and thus most combat parties) to be inherently OOC.

Edit: And now there's official approval.

Cooper

Frederich said:

Pretty sure that forcing people to change targets with auto-targetting in group combat is actually shrubbable.

pretty sure.

You'd be wrong. There was an issue a long time ago floating around that said it was illegal, but that was corrected extremely fast.

Re: the actual topic

Achaea is slowly shifting to where automatic scripts for offense is becoming a tiny bit more acceptable, and auto targeting falls under that. If you choose to automate your offense, though, people won't respect you as much when you kill people, and a lot of people will choose to just not fight you. It's not very skillful to create triggers that decide what to do for you at the push of one button.

Edit: oops, got ninja'd by Nicola.

Cynlael

Frederich said:

Group combat is BS and you need targets to be called.

Not true. It's as simple as having a pre-determined target order established before engaging... Once you get that down pat, you basically don't even need that. Needing to autotarget has never really been a thing.
--
Lol at the whole 'they can illusion in colour though!!' -- yeah but Achaea supports 255 different colours now. Hocus pocus does not: set trigger to ignore all of those ANSI colours for target calls, and just set party tells to a different one >.>

Don't really need a blacklist either, if you have some sort of name database.

if setting.raid then
   if nameDB[matches[3]].city ~= "yourcity" then
      <target changing stuff here>
   end
end

Womp.

Nazihk

My problem isn't some "scripting is impure and bad sport and you should manual it all", my problem is "I have gotten LOTS of people killed by illusioning/forcing target calls and I don't care how good your personal system is, 90% of the people out there are doing it with no checks whatsoever and they will happily bashcombo you into oblivion."

It's not bad practice because YOU PERSONALLY can't do it; it is bad practice because the vast majority of people out there will implement it poorly and run a train on you the first time somebody illusions/forces the right call. 

Reisen

Nazihk said:

My problem isn't some "scripting is impure and bad sport and you should manual it all", my problem is "I have gotten LOTS of people killed by illusioning/forcing target calls and I don't care how good your personal system is, 90% of the people out there are doing it with no checks whatsoever and they will happily bashcombo you into oblivion."

It's not bad practice because YOU PERSONALLY can't do it; it is bad practice because the vast majority of people out there will implement it poorly and run a train on you the first time somebody illusions/forces the right call. 

This is an easy fix, too. If they don't know how to code it, do it for them. Create an auto-targeting plugin that includes target blacklisting/anti-illusion/etc and distribute it to all party members. Their fault if they don't make use of it and end up killing you as a result.

Vender

just because a person has the opinion that you could improve yourself by weening off auto target doesn't mean he or she thinks auto in combat is bad in general.

the more variables and factors that come to play in a hectic group fight, the more likely it is that your script will not have the proper failsafe.

autotargeting also allows for complacency during raids. for some raid leaders want to make sure that their soldiers are able to learn and adapt over time. setting your own targets teaches you awareness and quickens your reaction time.

a raid leader knows he or she will be one of the first targets to go, and doesn't want to soley rely on people who auto target and can't think for themselves when things go south.

Reisen

1. There's no need to 'ween' off auto-targeting.

2. You can script a failsafe for everything. Absolutely everything. Try me.

3. So everyone that autotargets doesn't have good awareness or reaction times? What about the people that DO have that? Auto-targeting could make them even faster and more efficient.

4. Just because someone auto-targets doesn't mean that they're unable to call targets.

Anedhel

Do you just go dark if your target-caller is mind isolated, then? Raiders do that all the time, if you're fighting a competent group. 

Kez

My understanding has always been that it's perfectly fine to make someone's system screw them, with one exception. Abusing triggers to steal credits was popularly frowned upon.

Kiskan

I've used auto-targetting at times.  I have pretty poor reaction times.  The only real argument against a lot of this stuff is player experience, because there are people who can code things up tight, so I think you probably really can get around any of the "but it has a directly outcome related downside" concerns.  Even if you get bit in the ass a few times, I bet the overall benefit outweighs it if you are thinking strictly in terms of maximizing enemy body count.  

And hey, we all want to win, at least sometimes.  But at some point, I really don't feel like I am playing anymore, and auto-targetting is definitely one of those things that feels like a big step towards that.  And if "everyone" is auto-targetting, I am probably going to end up feeling like I have to all the time too.  

That's why there's controversy, mainly.  One side is totally okay with going all the way down that road (automation in general).  Some people are totally okay with going down that road even if they have no idea what just happened other than they entered an alias on this fancy system they installed.  But some people just don't find it very satisfying at some point.  It's not even all just manual snobs blessed with blistering reaction speed either (although there is some of that I am sure), but there is just a point where you don't feel like you are playing, and some people really want that.  It does sound like the human element (so far) does still play a role in fights (especially 1 v. 1 fights) at the very, very upper tiers, but I mean, even regular players often want to feel like they're playing - and you have to be reacting and providing some kind of input to get that feeling.  Oh well, ship's probably sailed or going to sail though, because it does seem like it can be done, and if it can be done, it likely will be done.

Cynlael

Pro tip: Just because you're happy to (apparently) automate everything you do in the game, that doesn't mean everyone is. And certainly doesn't mean you should throw such opinions onto everyone else, which you most definitely seem to be trying to do.

Auto-targeting is neither 'good' nor 'bad'; its uses differ from person to person.

Reisen

@Kiskan You sound like you don't code your own system. If you did, you'd understand that yes, it absolutely does feel like you're the one playing, and it's even an more amazing feeling since you wrote all the code that makes the things happen and it works. It's definitely an empowering feeling when you can create an artificial intelligence that can out-perform even the best fighters with the fastest reaction times (and with so little effort -- my Aetolia system, fully automated, is 328kb, and I can count the people who can beat it on one hand.)

That being said, any sort of 'human element' can be replaced entirely by scripting. Anything you can do as a human being in Achaea can be replicated by triggers and scripts -- that's all you're doing, anyway, in a fight, is reading what's on the screen and responding to it based on a set of variables. Easily translatable to programming language. Ever fought a bot in Quake? It's the same thing -- you're coding something to react to things as a human would. The thing is that a script can parse input and execute commands far faster than even the fastest human can. And what's better is that they can adapt and learn faster than a human can -- look up neural nets and genetic algorithms. While I don't think anyone has implemented that kind of programming in an IRE system, I'd love to see it happen. Full automation is legal as long as you're there at the keyboard in most IRE games (althought I don't know the ruling here) and Lua (the programming language of Mudlet) can do pretty much anything you want it to.

Anyway, don't diss scripting as not being part of the game, or thinking that you're not playing the game by using scripts. If you wrote them yourself, you absolutely are playing the game -- and you're playing it on a level that few others can truly aspire to.

Melodie

I personally don't really like auto-targeting  - for combat, anyway. For hunting it is perfectly understandable, especially when you hunt places like Morindar.

I used it for most of a real year in Eleusis and I found it made me fairly lazy in terms of trying to improve my group combat ability. I also found it tended to get in the way in particular situations: Say, the group gets split up due to gravehands and lo, I found a target I'm taking on my own, and then the raider leader calls a new target over pt - that's time lost trying to reset/override that. Yes, I know there's fail safes, but at the time those sorts of things were out of my reach in coding ability.

Once I moved to Mhaldor and was forced to manual again (Hasar was not a fan of auto-targeting and would definitely grump at you if found out), I floundered for a while, but also got better and better and eventually, had a lot more confidence in what I was doing. This became important because I actually began to learn to pick out a target order mentally as we were forming up/going at it, and if things got really hairy and the leader is locked down, people could hear my affliction announcements and easily (and manually) switch themselves to whomever I'm focusing on.

For every one person who claims they are just as capable by doing auto-target bits and still pushing themselves to be better combatants, there's nine others who grow very complacent and start to not only wane in ability, but rely to heavily on those people that they get annoyed when there isn't a leader around to tickle their triggers. It also leads into the problem of, say... Eleusis, who with a simple call of a target has 10 LoS attacks hitting you in .8 of a second. Which is not entertaining.

What I'm really saying is, bless you, Makarios, for the retardation change.

Cynlael

That's like saying using a bot in World of Warcraft (or any similar game really) is still 'playing the game', just cause you made it yourself.
[spoiler]What I'm saying is, you're not. If you're not physically controlling it, you're not playing it. Kinda simple logic there, no? If you're holding down F1 and letting it run, you're still not playing the game.[/spoiler]

PS. Aetolia combat is not the same as Achaean. Make a system that can do that- (not that I believe it in the first place. Been proven time and again that scripts aren't impossible, nor even exceptionally hard, to beat.)- then that comment will have weight.

PPS. Coding for Achaea is not the same as making something like DeepMind. You will never be able to beat absolutely every single person in combat, with scripts alone. Thankfully.

Kiskan

That's the first kind of player I meant, Reisen.  I've met people like that.  They just have a very different goal.  To them, the perfect system is the one that they turn on and turn lose to kill, and yeah, since they built it, I get that it can be fun to watch it do its thing.  And then there are people who still want to have some kind of input - although some of those people absolutely could build a bot.  

I do make my own stuff (it is just very, very crude), and part of what automation is about for many, many people is really just winnowing down a ton of input into something you can react to, and sure, making some of the decisions beforehand by using conditions.

Reisen

On the simplest level: I pressed a bunch of keys, and my character did stuff as a result. Am I not playing the game? Why does it matter what my input is, if the result is the character performs actions?

Cynlael said:

PPS. Coding for Achaea is not the same as making something like DeepMind. You will never be able to beat absolutely every single person in combat, with scripts alone. Thankfully.

Okay, explain this to me. I can't beat everyone in combat with scripts alone, why?

Melodie

Because automation takes out the human element, and humans are imperfect and make mistakes. That's part of the game for a lot of people - catching people off-guard, taking advantage of particular mistakes they made and pushing forward your own attacks to win.

When you take that out, it all becomes numbers and very, very boring for a vast majority of the playerbase. That is why Achaea does not want to become Aetolia.