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

Reisen

Cooper said:

You couldn't even kill me in a class I spent 20 minutes writing aliases and macros for an offense, and I'm an absolute terrible fighter. You have a very, very long way to go before you can take on Farrah.

Yeah, that was, what, my second day in Achaea? I still had things to learn, like the whole "server-side curing just loops smoke pipe if your pipes aren't lit" thing. Bit of a problem vs someone who spams aeon all day.

Tahquil

Reisen said:

Tahquil said:

and the guy on the bike will get "WTF is wrong with you? This is a 100m running sprint."

Then why let people bring bikes at all?

Well if you're going to ignore the bit where I said your anaolgy is flawed I'm going to bring a fucking fish and beat both of you unconscious with it. They're still not going to give me a gold medal for 100m sprint though.

Reisen

Tahquil said:

Well if you're going to ignore the bit where I said your anaolgy is flawed I'm going to bring a fucking fish and beat both of you unconscious with it. They're still not going to give me a gold medal for 100m sprint though.

Ah, well, it's not the medal that counts, it's the fun you had while doing it.

Aylek

Automation has its place.

Manual has its place.

Those places in combat are:

#1 - Manual
#2 - Automation

Antonius

Reisen said:

Antonius said:

My experience tells me that low skill combatants who choose to use automated offenses generally do so because they can't keep up with what's going on and make decisions in the available time (Achaean combat is, as most classes, fast paced), which is why I mentioned that when comparing manual vs system at low skill levels.

If you can do that, then you're not low skill; but if you're also fighting somebody else who can do that and they're manual, I'm honestly confused what advantage it is you think you have over them because of your automated offense.

Automated offense is infinitely faster than manual offense. It's all about the reaction time. Why spend a quarter of a second typing something out when you can press a key and have it happen instantaneously?

If I'm a Serpent, the fastest I'm dstabbing is ~1.7 seconds. In that time, my opponent is generally going to eat one herb, because my dstab balance is only slightly slower than herb balance. Sometimes, herb balance will line up so that they'll get to eat twice between my dstabs; if I have some experience as a Serpent, I know how often that occurs. If I have an idea of what their priorities are then I can predict ahead of time what that one eat is going to be.

Given that I have 1.7 seconds between attacks, what difference do you think it makes if it takes me 0.01 seconds or 0.25 seconds (plus latency in both cases) to enter my next set of commands? Hell, if I know exactly what you're going to do ahead of time (because I've analysed what you've done in the past), then it doesn't matter if it takes me 1.5 seconds to get my next set of commands queued. I'm still going to be attacking as effectively as a Serpent possibly can as long as I'm hitting with the right pair of venoms to achieve what I want to as fast as my balance will allow, and that's perfectly feasible to do manually, as evidenced by all of the Serpents I've personally seen doing it.

That "infinitely faster" system might be worth something if high tier combatants were incapable of doing what's required in the time allowed. But, as Makarios has stated, if that was the case the classes would be changed.

Farrah

You only have to type so fast to fight as max level. It's not really typing speed that gives automation an advantage (where it does have one), it's just ability to process information faster. If an herb is eaten within a short timeframe before your next attack goes through, there's a small window where presumably automation would take that cure into account and react but a manual fighter would not.

However, on the flip side, there's also a window where automation won't react fast enough because of ping but a manual fighter who is used to what's going on will use the appropriate attack because they predict instead of react and are spamming curare before bloodroot is eaten because they know it will be before they get balance.

I've played around with both automation and manual fighting and I 100% fight better manually in some circumstances than I can auto. Now, could you theoretically code a system to use the logic I do in my brain? Sure. But there's no point because it's much easier and more efficient to create a simple alias, when the logic is based on prediction rather than reaction.

So I wouldn't say automation is strictly better.

Reisen

@Antonius
That 0.25s per attack you save gives you an extra attack every 6-7 balances. Why wouldn't you want that? 

@Farrah
Automation can predict, as well as account for high ping. Anything you can do in a MUD as a human, a script can do it better.

Farrah

It doesn't because you're attacking immediately on balance regardless of when you queue the command...

Reisen

Farrah said:

It doesn't because you're attacking immediately on balance regardless of when you queue the command...

So... you're automating your attacks?

Jarrod

This convo is funny to me because two of the best examples of top tier combatants the game has ever had (Jarrel and Tanris) were both pretty much entirely manual (idk how manual Tanris was, pretty sure it was 'entirely'). One of them is a great coder, the other didn't know how to setup an offensive alias that let him choose between types of 2h attacks in one alias (and once I made that super simple alias for him he went out and killed people wtf).

Also, with queueing there is no mechanical advantage to coding. If you can decide on your attack within latency delay of recovering balance, you attack exactly as fast regardless. Terrible point to try and make.

PS. I would improve upon this:

Before touting your combat effectiveness.

Reisen

Jarrod said:

Also, with queueing there is no mechanical advantage to coding. If you can decide on your attack within latency delay of recovering balance, you attack exactly as fast regardless. Terrible point to try and make.

Do you literally not know what queueing is? It's coding designed to automatically make your next commands happen instantaneously on balance.

How about server-side curing? I don't see anybody complaining about the fact that a bunch of scripts someone coded completely automates eating/applying/smoking/etc for you. Should I be manually typing in "outr plant;eat plant" every time I get an affliction?

Jarrod

Inputting your attack vs letting a computer input your attack. No idea how you're unable to understand this.

Reisen

Jarrod said:

Inputting your attack vs letting a computer input your attack. No idea how you're unable to understand this.

I'm not letting the computer input my attack. I'm telling the computer to input my attack, exactly which attacks to use, and in what order to use them.

The computer sees that I'm telling it to attack in this certain way, and it says, "Okay, I'll attack in this certain way that you are telling me to do so, using your own combat knowledge that you learned yourself. In no way am I doing any of the actual thinking; I am merely taking a series of commands that you gave to me and sending them to the game in the order that you want me to send them."

Or, in simpler terms:


(note: this is very preliminary coding; the final product will be far more complex.)

How's that any different than manually typing the commands in?

Cynlael

Lol @ thinking using queue eqbal is what 'automation' is.

Lol.

Lol.

Lol.

Dunno if trolling at this point.

Reisen

Cynlael said:

Lol @ thinking using queue eqbal is what 'automation' is.

Lol.

Lol.

Lol.

I'm using your own logic here. Queue eqbal is automation because you're letting the computer attack for you!

Cynlael

You're fetching for straws at this point, it's entirely hilarious and adorable to watch.

Don't let me stop you, please carry on. I need some entertainment while unable to sleep.

Reisen

Nope, not even worth it.

Tahquil

Reisen said:

Tahquil said:

Well if you're going to ignore the bit where I said your anaolgy is flawed I'm going to bring a fucking fish and beat both of you unconscious with it. They're still not going to give me a gold medal for 100m sprint though.

Ah, well, it's not the medal that counts, it's the fun you had while doing it.

       

Cynlael

What part of 'I need some entertainment' did you not catch.

S'great watching Ernam Jr. arguing.

Introducing Mecha-Godzilla

              -Coded by Reisen-
[spoiler]Unfortunately you probably won't get the exact reference, but oh well. Everyone else will.[/spoiler]

Reisen

       

Antonius

Reisen said:

Jarrod said:

Inputting your attack vs letting a computer input your attack. No idea how you're unable to understand this.

I'm not letting the computer input my attack. I'm telling the computer to input my attack, exactly which attacks to use, and in what order to use them.

The computer sees that I'm telling it to attack in this certain way, and it says, "Okay, I'll attack in this certain way that you are telling me to do so, using your own combat knowledge that you learned yourself. In no way am I doing any of the actual thinking; I am merely taking a series of commands that you gave to me and sending them to the game in the order that you want me to send them."

Or, in simpler terms:


(note: this is very preliminary coding; the final product will be far more complex.)

How's that any different than manually typing the commands in?

Nobody is talking about manually typing the commands in. Here's what we are talking about:

If I have a keybinding per venom/affliction combo, and I have to choose which keybinding to hit based on what I want to do, then I'm manualling, even if that keybinding utilises queueing.

If I have a single keybinding, and when I push it some code runs that goes "Well, the target has asthma, but not paralysis, so use paralysis and clumsiness rather than paralysis and asthma", then I'm automating.

Dunn

..target.. " " ..aff1.. " " ..aff2


Unless you store your strings with leading and trailing spaces. 

Atalkez

@Reisen

Will gladly fight you best of 10 at NoT.

See how well your system holds up.

Dunn

She'd be coding on the fly a lot after truewrack atalkezimpatienceasthma x100 flew by. 

Jarrul

hello, coming from Midkemia I don't think I've met more than one person that automated his offense for pvp. I personally manual cure and do my own offense by typing really fast but that works there and not so much in Achaea. My question about people who automate offense, are they common here in this IRE game?

Puxi

What the actual fuck did I just read? Please lock this thread, my eyes are bleeding.

Kez

@Cynlael I've assumed she was trolling since my first encounter. That assumption hasn't let me down.

Cooper

Kez said:

@Cynlael I've assumed she was trolling since my first encounter. That assumption hasn't let me down.

Yeah, I'm sad I've fallen for the bait twice now. I definitely should have known after the first time, which was her illusioning me sending an inappropriate tell at the wheel after a jackpot was announced.

A master troll. 

Reiloch

Puxi said:

What the actual fuck did I just read? Please lock this thread, my eyes are bleeding.

We appear to have stumbled in to a philosophical debate on Achaean essentialism masquerading as a discussion about combat systems. 

Kez

@Cooper that was my first encounter! I got that tell while phased and went "wat".