Synaptic lock

Atalkez

I really dislike this concept of artifacts to counter abilities. If I can't counter an ability reasonably after transing every skill in the game, then what is the point of playing the game?

We really have to stop trying to fix problems by charging people money.

Atalkez

That doesn't change that mechanics where buying an item is the only reasonable counter, are poorly designed and a cop out to the underlying issue to begin with.

Austere

Atalkez said:

That doesn't change that mechanics where buying an item is the only reasonable counter, are poorly designed and a cop out to the underlying issue to begin with.

I don't have a problem with sapience, but I do agree with this logic. If a portion of the player base is able to completely ignore a skill because they spent money, then the relevance/necessity of that skill is moot. I'd rather see massive sapience nerfs than I would throwing another artefact at it to fix it.  

Kogan

Obvious solution is to message all users backlogs of when they were mindlocked by someone and that it broke every time someone uses a microwave to spy on Trump. 

Kyrra

I got my Anake's Hood at Christmas when I had excess candy canes. It was an item on my List that wasn't high priority but more for "I've gotten everything else now, what is next?" so it seemed like a good opportunity at the time.

It would be really fantastic if it was able to provide some use against Sapience. It would add to the value of the artefact.

I'm inclined to add privacy to every room of my player housing at the moment, and I spend more time not socialising on my ship by myself when I'm not out hunting or otherwise busy, because frankly I just don't trust my fellow citizens. Especially when they suddenly give you an odd look when you send tells to a Minister with semi-sensitive information.

I don't object to the ability but I want something that counters/prevents it working. 

Farrah

Eh. There aren't many. Buckawn's and Veil. Buy the artie to 100% negate ability or other artie. Anake's hood, for the things it does work for. What else is there that renders something 100% useless if you buy it? I hate the concept.

Atalkez

Daeir said:

Atalkez said:

That doesn't change that mechanics where buying an item is the only reasonable counter, are poorly designed and a cop out to the underlying issue to begin with.

I don't disagree at all, I'm just saying that's how it is.

They've resisted efforts to amend the superbly irritating pay-to-circumvent mechanics for years. They obviously want them to stay, and they're likely to add more of them.

It's not too widespread, and I'd like to keep it that way.

I have, as p much everyone knows, been anti veil and anti buckawn. Anake is just a much more tame version, obviously, so it's not brought up often. I think mechanis like this are just poorly thought out and stem from another time of the game.

Ryldagh

Austere said:

Atalkez said:

That doesn't change that mechanics where buying an item is the only reasonable counter, are poorly designed and a cop out to the underlying issue to begin with.

I don't have a problem with sapience, but I do agree with this logic. If a portion of the player base is able to completely ignore a skill because they spent money, then the relevance/necessity of that skill is moot. I'd rather see massive sapience nerfs than I would throwing another artefact at it to fix it.  

Another?  You know the anti-spying hood is already a thing, right?

Austere

Ryldagh said:

Austere said:

Atalkez said:

That doesn't change that mechanics where buying an item is the only reasonable counter, are poorly designed and a cop out to the underlying issue to begin with.

I don't have a problem with sapience, but I do agree with this logic. If a portion of the player base is able to completely ignore a skill because they spent money, then the relevance/necessity of that skill is moot. I'd rather see massive sapience nerfs than I would throwing another artefact at it to fix it.  

Another?  You know the anti-spying hood is already a thing, right?

I'm not going to explain how expanding functionality of a (assuming) lesser bought artefact would suddenly boost it's sales and raise the perceived requirement for it. 

Ozmatiah

From all this thread and talking to others. This just seems like a rather large negative impact on the game. I have no desire to casually idle near monks because there are just a lot of conversations that happen that people believe have a sense of privacy, including messages. Can we get hypersense in vision please?

Guess I'll be on my ship or skype if you need me.

Ismay

I might be misunderstanding the mechanics behind some of these abilities, but I don't think the lock will make such a difference if players use them.


Syntax:            TELESENSE [ON|OFF]     (available to everyone)
                   RELAX TELESENSE
Works on/against:  Adventurers
Drains:            Mana
Details:
Though it drains mana, this ability will inform you when most mind lock attempts are made on you or someone in your location.



Syntax:            MIND HYPERSENSE [ON|OFF]    (monk only)
Extra Information: Also drains willpower.

Works on/against:  Self
Resource:          200 mana
Drains:            Mana
Details:
You are now able to cast a net of telepathic power over the local area. Like a spider at the centre of his web, any attempts at telepathic locking within your net will vibrate the invisible strands of mental power and alert you to the attempts.




Syntax:            MIND TELESENSE [ON|OFF]     (monk only)
Works on/against:  Adventurers
Resource:          100 mana
Drains:            Mana
Details:
Due to your heightened telepathic awareness, you are able to detect attempts to lock your mind.

Kiet

The artifact is made to bypass those.

Farrah

Ismay said:

I might be misunderstanding the mechanics behind some of these abilities, but I don't think the lock will make such a difference if players use them.


Syntax:            TELESENSE [ON|OFF]     (available to everyone)
                   RELAX TELESENSE
Works on/against:  Adventurers
Drains:            Mana
Details:
Though it drains mana, this ability will inform you when most mind lock attempts are made on you or someone in your location.



Syntax:            MIND HYPERSENSE [ON|OFF]    (monk only)
Extra Information: Also drains willpower.

Works on/against:  Self
Resource:          200 mana
Drains:            Mana
Details:
You are now able to cast a net of telepathic power over the local area. Like a spider at the centre of his web, any attempts at telepathic locking within your net will vibrate the invisible strands of mental power and alert you to the attempts.




Syntax:            MIND TELESENSE [ON|OFF]     (monk only)
Works on/against:  Adventurers
Resource:          100 mana
Drains:            Mana
Details:
Due to your heightened telepathic awareness, you are able to detect attempts to lock your mind.

Mind Cloak ability makes those not detect the lock.

Devran

Atalkez said:

That doesn't change that mechanics where buying an item is the only reasonable counter, are poorly designed and a cop out to the underlying issue to begin with.

You have to buy lessons to trans skills. You are buying skills to counter an ability. How is this ANY different?

This stuff has been around forever as people have said, it's nothing new. The artifact just provides quality of life in the form of hiding the rejection message, which could already be achieved anyway.

The obvious solution is to make it so Sapience can't see things it shouldn't like issues and whatever. Let the admin decide what it should and shouldn't see and that's an end to it imo. Don't bring in game what you don't want people to not find. That's my opinion and some will disagree, just as I have disagreed with theirs.

One thing I'm taking away from this though is that I like how Makarios has come out and plainly stated several facts, including the admins stance on the subject. I like transparency, so thank you for that @Makarios.

Kiet

other than like maybe focus/clot who tf is transing skills to counter specific abiliities?

also 'don't bring iinto the game what you don't want people to find' is basically telling people to do half their roleplay over skype and discord unless they lead IC lives completely devoid of sensitive information/leadership/politics lol

Devran

Kiet said:

other than like maybe focus/clot who tf is transing skills to counter specific abiliities?

also 'don't bring iinto the game what you don't want people to find' is basically telling people to do half their roleplay over skype and discord unless they lead IC lives completely devoid of sensitive information/leadership/politics lol

Tumble. Fitness. Metawake. Insomnia.... There's fucking loads of skills that counter other skills or defend against that. Stop being stupid.

That's my opinion and some will disagree, just as I have disagreed with theirs.   <--- 

Aktillum

Skimmed through this thread a bit and brought back memories of an ancient bug where you could permanently sapience people by transferring the mind lock to them, even if they didn't have Telepathy skill.

Kiet

None of those counter a specific ability (instead being useful for several scenarios vs several classes), and one of those comes in herb/mineral form.

Sayenna

Generally when you say 'stop being stupid' you don't precede it with a stupid comment.

As Kiet said, none of them counter any abilities. One of them is an active cure which nearly every class has now, bar I think 2. Some serious grasping at straws with those examples. If there was an artifact that gave an extra active cure, it might've been a valid example.

However, literally everything you listed can be 'countered' in some way without buying an artifact to do so. As it should be.

Devran

Sayenna said:

Generally when you say 'stop being stupid' you don't precede it with a stupid comment.

As Kiet said, none of them counter any abilities. One of them is an active cure which nearly every class has now, bar I think 2. Some serious grasping at straws with those examples. If there was an artifact that gave an extra active cure, it might've been a valid example.

However, literally everything you listed can be 'countered' in some way without buying an artifact to do so. As it should be.

Skills are countered by other skills, whether class or general. Aside from about one skill which you can trans via lessons gained from leveling to Dragon, you paid for the rest. Just like artifacts.

I didn't think it was that hard of a point to grasp, but apparently so.

Ahmet

The lesson cost to get from one ability to the next within a skill (what you're effectively 'paying' for that particular ability) is nothing compared to the 800cr for buckawns or 2k credits for veil. Someone can tri-trans their first class with the cost of a buckawn's, and still have about 175 credits left over for goodies. Comparing one to the other is absolutely ridiculous.

Dochitha

Only when serpent is your 100th class and you want that to counter all abilities, to find out it is screwed over by cheap eyes sigil...

Reading over the pages, it looks like it's just a QoL Artefact... Not as bad as veil. Only thing is, the convenience and riskfree it offers are way too good. So I bought it. 

Kiet

There's a handful (or less) abilities that hard counter other abilities in this game. You're saying ridiculous shit, since veil and co. hard counter each other entirely.

The problem isn't only hard countering, either, it's having items that do either literally nothing (like buckawn's) besides said hard counter or that people don't want to get except for that hard counter.

People enjoy having abilities for their own sake. No one enjoys having a buckawn's amulet if web doesn't exist.

Keorin

People keep saying this is a convenience artifact as if that means it doesn't make a substantive difference, and I don't think that's true.

People are lazy, and between the amount of luck/work it already takes to get any interesting information, the need to code up something to silently break and reengage the lock, the baseline risk of getting caught (and people will often overweight risks), the need to pause your spying every fifteen seconds to reengage, plus the int artifacts needed to be able to shorten lock downtime when doing that, I think that there were certainly disincentives to prolific sapiencing.

All of those are gone with this artifact. With a pretty trivial amount of code, you can now spy in 100% guaranteed safety and with greater uptime then before, and I think that's gonna make a bigger difference then people are giving it credit for. After all, do we really think that every person buying this is doing it for a reduction in mana drain?

Devran

Keorin said:

People keep saying this is a convenience artifact as if that means it doesn't make a substantive difference, and I don't think that's true.

People are lazy, and between the amount of luck/work it already takes to get any interesting information, the need to code up something to silently break and reengage the lock, the baseline risk of getting caught (and people will often overweight risks), the need to pause your spying every fifteen seconds to reengage, plus the int artifacts needed to be able to shorten lock downtime when doing that, I think that there were certainly disincentives to prolific sapiencing.

All of those are gone with this artifact. With a pretty trivial amount of code, you can now spy in 100% guaranteed safety and with greater uptime then before, and I think that's gonna make a bigger difference then people are giving it credit for. After all, do we really think that every person buying this is doing it for a reduction in mana drain?

Using the fact you need to code something as a negative and then going on to say you need to code something on the same thing as a positive invalidates what you were trying to achieve with your statements, I feel.

Regardless, I stand by my opinion just as all of you stand by yours. I'm confident the Administration will make a good choice on what to do with this particular artifact and ability.

Alrena

Devran said:

Keorin said:

People keep saying this is a convenience artifact as if that means it doesn't make a substantive difference, and I don't think that's true.

People are lazy, and between the amount of luck/work it already takes to get any interesting information, the need to code up something to silently break and reengage the lock, the baseline risk of getting caught (and people will often overweight risks), the need to pause your spying every fifteen seconds to reengage, plus the int artifacts needed to be able to shorten lock downtime when doing that, I think that there were certainly disincentives to prolific sapiencing.

All of those are gone with this artifact. With a pretty trivial amount of code, you can now spy in 100% guaranteed safety and with greater uptime then before, and I think that's gonna make a bigger difference then people are giving it credit for. After all, do we really think that every person buying this is doing it for a reduction in mana drain?

Using the fact you need to code something as a negative and then going on to say you need to code something on the same thing as a positive invalidates what you were trying to achieve with your statements, I feel.

Regardless, I stand by my opinion just as all of you stand by yours. I'm confident the Administration will make a good choice on what to do with this particular artifact and ability.

If you'd actually read the post, you'd see the first statement was referring to someone who does NOT have this artefact, the second statement for someone who DOES.

Carry on, I already said my piece about this artefact and Sapience in general.

Antonius

Devran said:

Keorin said:

People keep saying this is a convenience artifact as if that means it doesn't make a substantive difference, and I don't think that's true.

People are lazy, and between the amount of luck/work it already takes to get any interesting information, the need to code up something to silently break and reengage the lock, the baseline risk of getting caught (and people will often overweight risks), the need to pause your spying every fifteen seconds to reengage, plus the int artifacts needed to be able to shorten lock downtime when doing that, I think that there were certainly disincentives to prolific sapiencing.

All of those are gone with this artifact. With a pretty trivial amount of code, you can now spy in 100% guaranteed safety and with greater uptime then before, and I think that's gonna make a bigger difference then people are giving it credit for. After all, do we really think that every person buying this is doing it for a reduction in mana drain?

Using the fact you need to code something as a negative and then going on to say you need to code something on the same thing as a positive invalidates what you were trying to achieve with your statements, I feel.

Regardless, I stand by my opinion just as all of you stand by yours. I'm confident the Administration will make a good choice on what to do with this particular artifact and ability.

Of course it doesn't invalidate it. It's not a matter of code versus no code, but a matter of the amount - and complexity - of the code required in each case.

Situation 1 (no artefact):
You need to understand mind lock mechanics, then be able to implement those in code. That means timing how long you've held the lock for (either a stopwatch or a tempTimer), and either always releasing the lock before the 15 seconds are up (relatively poor uptime) or calculating the probability that you'll lose the lock (arithmetic) and making a decision (if statements) about whether to break the lock. Given that you'd also need to use mind cloak - which has a relatively high willpower drain - in order to nullify telesense, your ability to maintain a lock on a target is also declining over time.

Situation 2 (with artefact):
You don't need to understand mind lock mechanics, and all you need to be able to do in terms of "code" is create a trigger that sends the mind lock command when you lose the lock (literally the best possible uptime you can achieve). No willpower drain from mind cloak also means that there's no* decline in your ability to maintain a lock over time.

*This is an oversimplification as there's presumably some amount of willpower usage just maintaining the lock, but it's vastly decreased by not also requiring mind cloak.

Micaelis

If you break lock before 15 seconds does that ensure you won't lose lock? I had thought there was a bit of rng to it no matter the situation. 

Dochitha

Situation 1 vs Situation 2, man, it is under priced! Worth buying.

Antonius

Micaelis said:

If you break lock before 15 seconds does that ensure you won't lose lock? I had thought there was a bit of rng to it no matter the situation. 

As far as I'm aware (based on whatever HELP/AB file this information is in - it was quoted earlier in this thread), the check for potentially losing the lock happens on a 15 second timer (to the extent that times in Achaea can be assumed to be accurate - there tends to be a small amount of variation due to it being single-threaded), starting from when the lock is gained.

Choosing to break the lock is instant and can't fail, so if you were to break lock yourself 14 seconds after gaining the lock, you should never lose it (and therefore the target should never be aware they're being mind locked). You'd only run into problems if you hit a lag spike that delayed the sending of commands long enough that the chance to lose the lock is processed before your command to break the mind lock is received and executed. Of course, you're not guaranteed to always lose the lock (since there are several factors involved), so that approach may result in losing a lot of potential uptime on your mind lock (and therefore Sapience).