Why don't we have...

MOSEY

... a general skill for affliction tracking, limb-damage tracking, and/or class-skills for determining when a kill path has been properly set up?

It seems to me that since many classes' kill paths require a person to have certain afflictions stacked or limbs prepped, we should also have a way to determine that our adversaries have these conditions. I mean, I know that people have client-side systems that attempt to do this, but why don't we have this server-side? There are traits for them--expert diagnoser and sawbones, etc.--but, these have a penalty associated with them.

Some kills require a person to have <50% health or mana and we all have access to Assess and Contemplate, with traits that make them balance-less. Why do we not also have equivalents for limb- and affliction-tracking?

Maybe I'm missing something, but from my experience at combat as a relative newbie (combat-wise), not having these critical abilities just steepens the learning curve tremendously and unnecessarily. If we got them, the best combatants in the game would still be the best combatants in the game, but at least those of us that are not script-savvy--or willing/able to collect and compile loads of data or pour over thousands of lines in logs or find 3rd party systems just to achieve even a sliver of combat viability--will have some combat viability. Hell, at least we would maybe be able to kill some of the highly artied fighters that are just standing there. The amount of meta-gaming that is required to function competitively in Achaean combat is insane.

Combat is already incredibly complicated without having these unnecessary (especially in this day and age) hurdles.

Give them a cooldown or something if everyone is afraid that it's too easy to abuse. I have no idea why someone would think this. I append Assess/Contemplate to every one of my combat hits--I'm essentially useless without them. This would be similar thing to that.

edit: I also think this would, in general, encourage a lot more people to participate in combat, leaving plenty more competition for those of us that are incapable of going toe-to-toe with the big boys and girls. There are a lot of people that swear off combat because of its overwhelming complexity. This would at least give everyone the ability to see clear markers of where they are in a fight.

So much of Achaea is hidden to its own and many players' detriment.

Saonji

Grass is greener, etc. If you've played any of the other IRE games, you'd know how terrible it is in reality being able to know those things outright. And how quickly it becomes boring.

I don't agree that adding this would make more people get into combat. Starmourn had ways to see whether or not you could kill people, it still didn't make more people participate. Complexity is the draw for most people; simplification is likely to make many stop doing it, not the other way around. And, if anything, this would just further encourage automation and not really solve anything.

Sobriquet

Combat in Achaea is unnecessarily over complex and has been for years, made worse by the top 5% of fighters running everything from the ACC where unless you do something at a specific time against a specific class undertaking specific condition within a 0.2s window, you die. They intentionally hide numbers for things such as limb breaks and expect you to spend months working it out, they aren't going to help any more than they already do. 

You won't win this fight, along with most of the fights IG. 


Yes, I'm overaly bitter on this and sure the usual suspect(s) will tell me I'm wrong. Its a very enjoyable part of the game but also the most frustrating and infuriating. Just because its better now than it used to be, doesn't mean its still actually any good. We have about 10 people who actually enjoy fighting anymore, the power creep from artefacts and talismans ensure that while most people start getting into combat, it's ultimately a pretty fruitless endeavour. 

Archaeon

Most kill conditions don't have a short window where you need to do a certain thing at a certain time to avoid it. I can think of two, both are the factional knight classes. 

Shecks

You mean like Expert Diagnose and Sawbones?  These do almost exactly what you want.  ED used to be a free action with a cool down but it was wisely given a balance because even being able to check for a single affliction was pretty OP for affliction classes.  Even single ff with a balance is still pretty powerful when used surgically.

You could also be a Priest and - wish comes true!  They can instantly check for almost every win condition they have with Contemplate and their ability to fully diagnose their enemies.

And as Saonji pointed out, a lot of people actually like the complexity - and I'm definitely one of them.  If you aren't a fan, there's always monk!

[Deleted User]

Priests don't have diagnose anymore.

A lot of the 'skill' for combat comes from working with the inherent ambiguity. Very few people have affliction tracking that is fully precise, and their goals can be accomplished well before that. I don't think any classes outright require affliction tracking, some of them have tight windows (maybe because of how much affliction tracking CAN help) but there aren't any that can't be done manually. There are definitely some that push these limits, I would never suggest trying to manual shaman/bard or anything with a lot of moving parts or timing for someone new, but it can definitely be done. A lot of the newer classes and revamps were done with this in mind and do a good job of reducing the margin between automation and not.

Most limb damage in particular has ambiguity built into it. A lot of defensive strategies come from being able to properly throw off the information you're relaying, and these sort of mind games are important for upper tier combat. There have been discussions about making limb damage easier to approach by making the information gathering process easier, but full precision would make some classes a lot more ridiculous while neutering others.

There's definitely a high learning curve and ceiling, but that's a big part of the appeal and why you have people who have been playing this game for a decade+ and still find new things to try and work with.

Mizik

Edit: damn I started typing this 2 hours ago and @Shecks ninja'd while I was slammed at work

Immersion and balance are factors here. 

Achaea is an immersive roleplaying world first, world's best fighting game second. To turn it into a mathematical metagame would suck the enjoyment and mystery that most of the playerbase enjoys - us combatants who think in numbers get joy from cracking formulas or finding imbalances are a minority. The effort taken in finding out the things you're asking for ourselves are the big accolades. 

Given formulas and abundant kill checks in a text game draws the success rate of rng based kills (see: rapid momentum) too close to 100%. It minimizes player skill and promotes automation. 

Think back to Expert Diagnoser in the hands of a Serpent or a Knight. Even a simple tool as that eliminated 50/50s and 33s to secure 100% kills. A game breaker. Now that is nerfed and the game is better for it. 

Eryl

MOSEY said:

... a general skill for affliction tracking, limb-damage tracking, and/or class-skills for determining when a kill path has been properly set up?

It seems to me that since many classes' kill paths require a person to have certain afflictions stacked or limbs prepped, we should also have a way to determine that our adversaries have these conditions. I mean, I know that people have client-side systems that attempt to do this, but why don't we have this server-side? There are traits for them--expert diagnoser and sawbones, etc.--but, these have a penalty associated with them.

RE: Affliction tracking. There is not a single class that requires affliction tracking to function.  Affliction tracking is helpful, and automatically calling your venoms via a script is also helpful.  However, there are still times when I completely throw out what my tracker says because I have a gut feeling the target might change a priority on me, or I've practiced the manual rendition so many times that just fall back on it instead.

The number one place to start is charting your kill path.  Make a timelime for your attacks and the cures you suspect your target to eat.  For instance, most people will cure paralysis before asthma.  I know that the first time I do paralysis/asthma, my target may touch tree and reset my by "nullifying my turn".  If they do that, I'll just do paralysis/asthma again.  Now I know they have time to cure both of those, but the second cure will happen right before I get balance back.  That means they'll eat bloodroot, then kelp, then be off herb balance when I get balance back.  I'll do paralysis/asthma again.  Since they're already off balance, they only have time to cure one thing before my next attack.  Therefore, I'll do curare/asthma AGAIN.  Now they'll cure paralysis, but they won't be able to cure the asthma before I get balance back.  My next attack could be paralysis/darkshade.  I know (or at least have evidence) they're curing paralysis first.  I know they can only cure one affliction between my balances here again, so if they cure paralysis, on my next balance they will still have asthma and darkshade.

This basic principal will let you figure out a manual path to kill people.  If you are a serpent, you can reasonably expect to stab four times in the window the opponent drops rebounding and regains it.  This means I could chart it like this:

I AFFLICT PARALYSIS/ASTHMA > they eat bloodroot and touch tree, curing both > I AFFLICT PARALYSIS/ASTHMA > they eat bloodroot, then eat kelp > I AFFLICT PARALYSIS/ASTHMA/SNAP(which means impatience hits in about 1.5s) > they eat bloodroot to cure paralysis, but don't have time to cure asthma > I AFFLICT ANOREXIA/SLICKNESS AS IMPATIENCE HITS > they are locked because tree is still on cooldown > I AFFLICT PARALYIS/WEARINESS > they are locked and can't cure anymore because the paralysis will stop them from touching tree when they get balance back.

I don't need an affliction tracker to tell me that if I do x y and z in that order in this time frame, this thing will happen.  As you get better and fight more, you realize different people cure differently.  This means you spar the same person over and over and over until you know how to beat them.  Then, when you fight someone who acts like them, you already know what to do and just rely on that muscle memory.

RE: Limb counting.  There are a ton of scripts on this forum for limb counting, and some people have even posted the formulas they've reversed engineered.  For instance, Antonius has a great limb tracker that you can configure out of the box to count hits (Mudlet only).  Atalkez posted the formulas he has for BM quit recently because Caladbolg asked for them, and if you tell Kez he's pretty he may answer questions on how to use them.  If you tell me -I'm- pretty instead, maybe I'll tell you what he taught me.  Best to ask in game, though.  Some of us make our character's purpose being an IC combat tutor, and that's how we have our fun.

Some kills require a person to have <50% health or mana and we all have access to Assess and Contemplate, with traits that make them balance-less. Why do we not also have equivalents for limb- and affliction-tracking?

These things exist, but as others mentioned, the affliction one has been rightfully nerfed.  In Achaea, some afflictions are cured by the same thing.  Paralysis and slickness can both be cured by eating bloodroot.  If you eat bloodroot, it's random which one is cured; there's a 50% chance the bloodroot will cure paralysis and a 50% chance the bloodroot will cure slickness instead.  That's what we call a '50/50.'  If you already have asthma and the bloodroot cures your paralysis, I follow up with impatience/anorexia, you're locked and can't cure.  If the bloodroot cures your slickness, though, and I follow up with impatience/anorexia, you'll just apply to cure the anorexia and eat to cure another affliction, meaning I effectively "lost that turn" because nothing came of it.  Expert Diagnoser, as Shecks and Mizik mentioned, let us skip that.  It's good that we can't, because then you'd have to deal with offenses that really are close to perfect instead of feeling that way because your attacker got lucky on the RNG (random-number-generator, a term we use to describe the 50/50).

Sawbones is a trait that lets you see limb damage in a general sense, and I know some people who use it to a non-trivial degree of success when supplementing their own counting.

Maybe I'm missing something, but from my experience at combat as a relative newbie (combat-wise), not having these critical abilities just steepens the learning curve tremendously and unnecessarily. If we got them, the best combatants in the game would still be the best combatants in the game, but at least those of us that are not script-savvy--or willing/able to collect and compile loads of data or pour over thousands of lines in logs or find 3rd party systems just to achieve even a sliver of combat viability--will have some combat viability. Hell, at least we would maybe be able to kill some of the highly artied fighters that are just standing there. The amount of meta-gaming that is required to function competitively in Achaean combat is insane.

Combat is already incredibly complicated without having these unnecessary (especially in this day and age) hurdles.

What you'll eventually start realizing is that Achaean combat is like a puzzle, and all the pieces fit together REALLY REALLY REALLY well.  You can't see what the puzzle looks like until it's done, but you don't have all the pieces yet.  It will look a lot clearer, cleaner, and more sensible once you get in and really learn how it all works together.

Give them a cooldown or something if everyone is afraid that it's too easy to abuse. I have no idea why someone would think this. I append Assess/Contemplate to every one of my combat hits--I'm essentially useless without them. This would be similar thing to that.

This is a good example of missing pieces.  While you have access to those numbers via assess/contemplate, if you're doing both of those on every attack, I'm going to love fighting you if I have a mana kill because you're blowing through more mana than usual.  Also, I have a rough idea of how hard my attacks hit and how much my enemy is curing, so I can estimate losses to health and mana if I don't assess/contemplate.  For example, as a Magi, I know my conflagration does about 17% max health (on average) a tic.  That means anytime I see the conflagration hit, I can assume they've lost that much health.  I can reasonably assume my enemy can sip back about 22% of their max health (on average) a sip.  That means if I conflagrate and they immediately sip, they've made a net increase of about 5% of their max hp.

Even when you're scripting this stuff, there's a large degree of variance.  Not everyone will do the same damage because we don't all have the same int and collar artefacts.  Not everyone will sip the same amount because some of us sip more (or less) because of artefacts, traits, our race bonuses, or what afflictions we have.  An example here is impatience: when you have impatience, your mana sips are reduced by half.

edit: I also think this would, in general, encourage a lot more people to participate in combat, leaving plenty more competition for those of us that are incapable of going toe-to-toe with the big boys and girls. There are a lot of people that swear off combat because of its overwhelming complexity. This would at least give everyone the ability to see clear markers of where they are in a fight.

So much of Achaea is hidden to its own and many players' detriment.

What you call our detriment, we call our playground.  There is no greater joy than finally sitting down with all the puzzle pieces you've found and finally finish that puzzle.

Because people die at the end.

The body is five characters too short.

Eryl

@MOSEY

Here's an example of what a chart could also look like.  When I'm learning a new class/route, or when I'm teaching someone one of them like is the case in this picture, I'll chart like this.  I'm a kinesthetic > visual learner, so actually doing the charting helps me understand it while referencing the picture while practicing helps me find my errors.

MOSEY

This thread has actually kind of made want to never fight again.

Archaeon

welcome to our world

Jovolo

Sobriquet said:

Combat in Achaea is unnecessarily over complex and has been for years, made worse by the top 5% of fighters running everything from the ACC where unless you do something at a specific time against a specific class undertaking specific condition within a 0.2s window, you die. They intentionally hide numbers for things such as limb breaks and expect you to spend months working it out, they aren't going to help any more than they already do. 

You won't win this fight, along with most of the fights IG. 


Yes, I'm overaly bitter on this and sure the usual suspect(s) will tell me I'm wrong. Its a very enjoyable part of the game but also the most frustrating and infuriating. Just because its better now than it used to be, doesn't mean its still actually any good. We have about 10 people who actually enjoy fighting anymore, the power creep from artefacts and talismans ensure that while most people start getting into combat, it's ultimately a pretty fruitless endeavour. 

Your first paragraph is wrong Sobri and not at all how the ACC has ever approached combat balancing for at least the past five years. ACC also has nothing to do with the issue of numbers being hidden and have regularly campaigned to the admin for more transparency and damage standardisation to make things easier to track i.e. weapon changes, sawbones, expert diagnoser. These are all ideas that develop from the ACC and then have to be filtered through the production team. Sometimes things go through, sometimes they don't.

As offense systems have improved for affliction tracking and automated attack selection, the disparity between those who automate and those who don't increases dramatically. Complexity was actually fun (imo) when this gulf did not exist to the same extent that it does now.

The problem is not just the complexity but also design choice. Classes have become faster with higher affliction output while defence has been repeatedly nerfed with internal CDs, which places a much greater emphasis on how well-refined your offence is because you're trying to beat the other person to their kill setup rather than survive it. This is compounded by power creep - they want to keep the people who have been playing for 7-8+ years engaged because they just don't make much of their money from newer players. Matt's said this himself in interviews before, it's the existing (and old) players that tend to make up a large amount of the income when compared to people who started in the past 2-3 years.

I am also bitter at the design choices of the past five years and seem to be in the minority about this as well, so I do feel your pain there. There are changes like Survival being tied to leveling (which was an amazing introduction to the game) which gave me hope, but ultimately meh. Combat is hard to enjoy now.

If you actually are interested in pursuing combat despite what you've seen @MOSEY, then Eryl's post with a fork strategy flow chart is probably the most helpful thing to take away from this thread. It's not like it's impossible to get involved and participate to a decent level without 10,000s of credits. Just have to gauge whether or not it's worth the time investment for you.

Elgabri

Why did infernals lose I believe it was true-sight. It was a necromancy skill, but we retained some skills but not others. Seems like it would be a skill we would retain.

Elgabri

Jovolo said:

Sobriquet said:

Combat in Achaea is unnecessarily over complex and has been for years, made worse by the top 5% of fighters running everything from the ACC where unless you do something at a specific time against a specific class undertaking specific condition within a 0.2s window, you die. They intentionally hide numbers for things such as limb breaks and expect you to spend months working it out, they aren't going to help any more than they already do. 

You won't win this fight, along with most of the fights IG. 


Yes, I'm overaly bitter on this and sure the usual suspect(s) will tell me I'm wrong. Its a very enjoyable part of the game but also the most frustrating and infuriating. Just because its better now than it used to be, doesn't mean its still actually any good. We have about 10 people who actually enjoy fighting anymore, the power creep from artefacts and talismans ensure that while most people start getting into combat, it's ultimately a pretty fruitless endeavour. 

Your first paragraph is wrong Sobri and not at all how the ACC has ever approached combat balancing for at least the past five years. ACC also has nothing to do with the issue of numbers being hidden and have regularly campaigned to the admin for more transparency and damage standardisation to make things easier to track i.e. weapon changes, sawbones, expert diagnoser. These are all ideas that develop from the ACC and then have to be filtered through the production team. Sometimes things go through, sometimes they don't.

As offense systems have improved for affliction tracking and automated attack selection, the disparity between those who automate and those who don't increases dramatically. Complexity was actually fun (imo) when this gulf did not exist to the same extent that it does now.

The problem is not just the complexity but also design choice. Classes have become faster with higher affliction output while defence has been repeatedly nerfed with internal CDs, which places a much greater emphasis on how well-refined your offence is because you're trying to beat the other person to their kill setup rather than survive it. This is compounded by power creep - they want to keep the people who have been playing for 7-8+ years engaged because they just don't make much of their money from newer players. Matt's said this himself in interviews before, it's the existing (and old) players that tend to make up a large amount of the income when compared to people who started in the past 2-3 years.

I am also bitter at the design choices of the past five years and seem to be in the minority about this as well, so I do feel your pain there. There are changes like Survival being tied to leveling (which was an amazing introduction to the game) which gave me hope, but ultimately meh. Combat is hard to enjoy now.

If you actually are interested in pursuing combat despite what you've seen @MOSEY, then Eryl's post with a fork strategy flow chart is probably the most helpful thing to take away from this thread. It's not like it's impossible to get involved and participate to a decent level without 10,000s of credits. Just have to gauge whether or not it's worth the time investment for you.

I would say 10,000 credits and a high level of scripting wins combat. 

Shecks

Elgabri said:

I would say 10,000 credits and a high level of scripting wins combat. 

tbf it's more like 50,000.  10k credits barely covers a level 1 set and class arties, along with the obligatory tattoos, wings, buckawns, aldar, and probably some stuff for bashing since you're going to need to bash a lot if you only have 10k credits.  Even then, I have full level 3 everything and still died in like 15 seconds to Psion with updated SVO and no idea what I was looking at.  Knowing what you're doing wins combat.

Adrik

Shecks said:

Elgabri said:

I would say 10,000 credits and a high level of scripting wins combat. 

tbf it's more like 50,000.  10k credits barely covers a level 1 set and class arties, along with the obligatory tattoos, wings, buckawns, aldar, and probably some stuff for bashing since you're going to need to bash a lot if you only have 10k credits.  Even then, I have full level 3 everything and still died in like 15 seconds to Psion with updated SVO and no idea what I was looking at.  Knowing what you're doing wins combat.

??????? 50k?

I have a retire value of 27k. So 54k cr.

1st class + artie weapon (level 3 for some, though level 1 or none is fine for others) is 350 ~ 1600.. Aldar is is 1k. Buckawns isn't necessary, but is nice, so 800. Wings are also nice, so 800.. so 850cr for first class, lets assume 1600 for the best weapon, 2600 for buckawns + diadem + wings... Throw in an SoA for good measure, for another 800...  level 3 bracelet for 1400, 1k for con belt level 2, 1250 for level 2 str or int... that puts us at 9.5k.. 50k is not at all required for winning fights. 

Hikagejuunin

There are a lot of people that swear off combat because of its overwhelming complexity. This would at least give everyone the ability to see clear markers of where they are in a fight.

So much of Achaea is hidden to its own and many players' detriment.

I honestly am there with you on being disillusioned with combat. It's mostly if you can code and if you can't don't bother, except for that daily renown!

Definitely does reduce the number of people willing / able to do combat. You could always become a thief though! It's sorta like PvP, but even more fun!

Caelan

such an old ass excuse.  it takes a little practice and there are TONS of people willing to help, myself included.  I am by no means a professional coder and it took me less than 3 months to learn everything I needed to make my own curing system.  Now that Ive learned more, I am re writing it (and that 3 months was playing the game, defending, offending, hunting, running a House while scripting - plus being a full time student, full time employee, and raising 3 kids so... - max 10 hours a week).

There are also a lot of pre made scripts, entire curing systems that only require you to get/figure out prios.  Can we stop blaming coding?  It helps, sure.. but generally it comes down to time spent learning the classes and how to fight different opponents.  Can you make a char, .sign on, and own Proficy? no.  buy half the "coders" cant either.

Jovolo

If you're struggling with combat, it isn't because you don't know how to code.

Gurklukke

Combat is more about understanding your skills and how to maximize your usefulness against your foes.
Even moreso understanding your enemies and how their skills will effect you.

Some classes do have a higher need for coding if you want to track things intensively, but even limb classes can be monitored by knowing why x effects person with y to get z
You can be genuinely effective with some aliases and diversity, over a scripted kill button, it just requires time and investment into learning your class.

Or, you can just spam a few macros and be generally useful in groups and not in 1v1, or vice versa.

Just depends what you want and where you want to be.  I manual everything, and I don't feel inept, just not stellar.

Archaeon

Combat is all about how well you code and if I lose its not my fault cause the other guy has more arties

Lyrin

Combat is about posting on the forums to tell people what combat is (or should be) about.

Sobriquet

Jovolo said:

If you're struggling with combat, it isn't because you don't know how to code.

True. Its because its stupidly over complicated