Glance

Sylvance

Could we make it so that learning Squint makes it so that Glance no longer takes eq (just as Squint doesn't)?

Darklyre

They're different skills. Squint lets you see more rooms, but Glance lets you see the adjacent room's exits.

Xer

Doubt this is going to happen. It would be extremely easy to make an alias then to "Observe" by glancing in every given direction, which would mean that you might as well take away the eq cost of Observe. But then spamming observe, would be the same thing as alertness, which is a higher level skill AND has a mana drain associated to it. You're effectively negating some of the the later skills by implementing this change. 

Furthermore, given that glance doesn't interrupt certain actions, such as propping totems and other "interruptable" abilities, but squint does, and some other tiny differences (like seeing room exits and whatnot for glance, not for squint) having an eq loss associated to it seems reasonable to me.

Sylvance

Okay, I wasn't aware of these factors. Thanks to both of you!

Sena

I don't think it would be a big deal. Sure, there are advantages to glance over squint, but I can't think of any actual problems with glance being free (or observe; squinting in every direction is already better as a sort of alertness than observe or glancing in every direction (although alertness being passive makes a big difference, so it still won't be obsolete)). And for finding the exits from adjacent rooms, most of the time you can use map, which is free and shows you more than just one adjacent room.

On the other hand, I don't really see a reason for glance to be free. There's usually map for finding exits and squint for everything else, and situations where you can glance but not squint and the eq loss matters aren't very common (as far as I know). It would just be occasionally useful for some players.

Sylvance

Example: I'm on the ropes in Creville being teamed by two horkies, squinting to the east and rest, my addled mind just picks up that there are agg mobs in each direction. What I need to know is if the next room is safe, not what's down the corridor. I appreciate that most people wouldn't find it difficult to figure this out using squint, but for me it's a bit confuzzling. And like I intimated, I thought Squint was just an upgraded Glance.

Xer

If you're confused about where Squint starts, make a squint alias that has a cecho at the beginning. Something like 

========== THIS IS WHERE SQUINT STARTS! ==========

========== THIS IS WHERE SQUINT STARTS! ==========

should make it clear that the room right after it, is the room adjacent to yours, and then the proceeding rooms are one away in order. I guess there stil might be some further difficulties in discerning rooms, but I think there are not very difficult coding solutions that exist to make things like that clear

Iocun

Xer said:

If you're confused about where Squint starts, make a squint alias that has a cecho at the beginning. Something like 

========== THIS IS WHERE SQUINT STARTS! ==========

========== THIS IS WHERE SQUINT STARTS! ==========

should make it clear that the room right after it, is the room adjacent to yours, and then the proceeding rooms are one away in order. I guess there stil might be some further difficulties in discerning rooms, but I think there are not very difficult coding solutions that exist to make things like that clear

This confuses me. You first argue that there should be something to make it unviable to use observe repeatedly to replace alertness, but then bring up how squint can be coded to function very similarly. This is inconsequential. If you're against a free replacement for alertness and the like existing, you should also be against free squinting, or at the very least against coding it to work so "practical". If we're already going with the "it's scriptable"-idea, we also need to accept the fact that we can get room exits from our mappers, that we can simply squint;reprop if we're propping a totem, and so on, making squint really work in pretty much all situations where we'd use glance or observe otherwise.

Considering this, I believe both glance and observe should be free. I really can't see a situation where this would be OP compared to the status quo. All it does is make certain things a bit neater and more convenient.

Alertness is still useful, as it doesn't require constant spamming (which is suboptimal with latency, or in retardation, etc.), goes through walls, and so on, particularly since the mana drain of alertness isn't that great anyways and it doesn't have any willpower cost at all.

Xer

Eh, I wouldn't mind much at all if it were implemented. I wasn't arguing that it's necessary to have something to make it unviable to use observe repeatedly to replace alertness - it's more an observation I've noticed that I thought might be relevant. For example, coding something to check all your vials and list them out is quite easily scriptable already. Does that make the existence of ElixList absolutely worthless and it should be taken out? I don't think so.

However, I don't quite agree with the statement that squint works in pretty much all situations where we'd use glance though. You can't squint/reprop as often as you would with glance, only once every 2.5 seconds if you want the totem actually propped for the entire duration, since that's roughly the balance it takes to prop a totem. Glancing on the other hand, takes only half a second of equilibrium, and doesn't drop the totem. I remember dying in a two second interval where I squinted/reproped and went "Oh. I'm dead, aren't I?" Granted, glancing might not have saved me there either, but if I only needed to instantly move out of the way half a second later, instead of a full 2.5 seconds, I might have survived. That's just one particular example though >.> All in all, it's just some quibbling here and there, not a major change either way in terms of impact I would imagine.

Iocun

Xer said:

You can't squint/reprop as often as you would with glance, only once every 2.5 seconds if you want the totem actually propped for the entire duration, since that's roughly the balance it takes to prop a totem. Glancing on the other hand, takes only half a second of equilibrium, and doesn't drop the totem.

Fair enough, but then, I hardly think that the ability to glance or observe without eq loss while propping would be OP in any way.