Slowing down combat

Now I'm not sure what many of you would think of this, but in the past recent years I've been feeling a bit overwhelmed by the speed of combat. I guess this could be do to a few factors:
-I'm getting old
-Bahrain has too much lag
-Nostalgia

But I think just as well it could be a few of these things:
-The rise in artifact availability to players, making the speed threshold generally lower, and more tactics being developed and widely spread as the only way to fight at a certain speed
-More classes have various ways to cause more afflictions, sylvan/occie can be more precise and generally quick in dishing out multiple things at once. Serpents speed increased, changes to hypochondria
-classleads. Skills just seem to be naturally faster these days, and I think that comes from years of classleads saying "X is too slow" so something might get sped up a tiny bit, but it ends up making another skill less effective, and kind of goes in a circle.

Like I said, this is pretty subjective, but as I got around to trying to mess around with shaman and sometimes toying with some other classes, I feel like there is a lot more affliction tracking that is needed and a good algorithm for figuring out what attack or affliction to use next.
I've seen 2h counters that will instantly bypass parry (check their parry, if you go for a leg it switches to the other), triggered tumbles to an appropriate room if your legs are broken and prone, things such as that. Now I recognize that a lot of these things are a kind of ease of access thing and I am sure plenty of it would still be done. But many times in combat I see that the winner can often be done because of a fluke of a system, or an input sent in at a certain point that ends up firing instead of the desired input (lag between applying to head, then getting your leg broken but not having it switch to legs in time)

But, even as I go through doing a slew of alias' to make my offense somewhat reliable, there are still things that I don't seem to have the reflexes to do that get handled by a system. Touching tree if I'm inches from a lock sometimes, or automatically fitnessing, when I had instead hit the attack button. Sure those have saved my life before but in that moment it was a computer that took over for me and fixed my mistake before I could go through with it.

So I know restructuring how balance works would take a ton of work and completely re-evaluating every kind of curative, balance, and defense, so I won't even go into how that would work.

I'm mostly interested in if anyone else happens to feel that combat in itself is a bit of a blur, and if it could be slowed down a bit. I think combat could be decently slowed down, and while automation wouldn't really stop I think it would be easier to ponder your next attack or defensive posture before you regained balance, and before you were pummled again. If instead tactics that relied on a .1-.2 second window relied on a half second window. I think it would make things slightly easier to understand and allow you to make some better judgment calls rather than having a system interject at the right moment when you're not quite expecting it.

TL:DR I'm not really a combatant and I probably don't know what I'm talking about. It would just be a personal preference
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Comments

  • KayeilKayeil Washington State
    Coding aside (because I suck badly at it), the speed of combat is one of the big factors that has kept me from being interested in it. It's just too fast for me, and so I have no idea what is going on, and can't even learn much from it. Granted, memorizing all of the combat stuff is also a bit daunting... so it's not JUST the speed of combat that intimidates me. I think it'd make it more accessible for some people, but might make combat less interesting for those who already love it. Maybe a "slow combat" mode option for arenas would be good for training, I think someone like me could learn in that environment, and once it became more of a habit maybe the speed would be easier to handle.
    What doesn't kill you gives you exp.

  • Combat is definitely hard to get into and learn, that's for sure. Though, once you understand and get the hang of it, you learn to spot/watch for certain things and suddenly the pace doesn't seem as daunting anymore.

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  • Could it be? Yes. Should it be? Probably not. It would absolutely kill the game for me, I imagine. Long balances are incredibly painful for me, personally, so it's simply not a game I'd enjoy playing.

  • I'd love for it to be slowed down. Trying to keep up with what's happening at this rate when everyone has a carefully calculated finisher requires client assistance to catch that under-a-second window that decides whether you live or die.
  • KayeilKayeil Washington State
    Antonius said:

    Could it be? Yes. Should it be? Probably not. It would absolutely kill the game for me, I imagine. Long balances are incredibly painful for me, personally, so it's simply not a game I'd enjoy playing.

    I think that's why an arena mode for slower combat would be a decent compromise. Good for training, but doesn't change the combat environment as it is. Might bring in more combatants to duel and raid with.
    What doesn't kill you gives you exp.

  • ShirszaeShirszae Santo Domingo
    I probably would not mind too terribly if it was slowed down a bit, but then I enjoy two-hander combat, where everyone else seems to find it unbearably slow.

    Also, I think part of the rush of combat is that it all happens so quickly, you either win or die, but whichever it is, it happens fast. Prolonged combat and spars never quite have this feeling, so I am not sure it'd be for the best if PVP as a whole was made to feel like this.

    And you won't understand the cause of your grief...


    ...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.

  • The speed is fine. I hate long balances too. 

    That said, I enjoyed fighting in retardation. Get a mage, drop ret and have fun. It is another world altogether. 

  • Arena mode where everything is increased would be neat, particularly in aiding upcoming players to get a grip on things.

  • AereidhnaAereidhna Dallas
    edited January 2016
    Would love a slower arena mode for learners.

    I'm caught on slowing it down in general - as a non-com the speed and complexity is part of what scares me about combat (also personality-wise it's just not my cup of tea, which isn't Achaea's fault by any means, I dislike combat for the same reason I dislike chess and Risk). But also the speed and complexity is obviously something the combatants who pour their time, energy, and money into it seem to love.

    So I'm not sure if it's fair to want the game to adjust to people like me who are not hardcore into combat. The lure of multiclass seems to be primarily around combat strategy, and that makes more money for Achaea, which is a wonderful thing.

    There is also the factor, though, that speed can completely shut out folks who have a lot of lag who might otherwise really want to get into combat. Server-side curing definitely mitigates this to a point.

    It's complicated.
  • I don't know, I think some people are assuming that combat would be far too slowed down from it's current incarnation with that suggestion. 

    I don't think a slowdown would really change the pace of combat at all to be honest. I think a lot of combat ends up going longer than intended because of someone screwing something up. Most of the time a good fighter will be finishing things up on the first proper execution.

    I guess a lot of it is just looking at the people who have affliction trackers/ venom selectors as part of their main offence. The game is fast enough that people are more reliant on specific codes of affliction settings than being able to properly decide what they want on the fly. 

    Right now a lot of the afflictions seem to be: I'll press F1 if I want to stack kelp afflictions with a bloodroot spam or I'll press F2 if I want to stack ginseng afflictions with a bloodroot spam. Now I know not everyone is guilty of that but I think the speed is what makes people somewhat unable to do that on their own two feet.

    I remember back before speed knights were the only way to play knights and when serpents had 2.8 second dstabs. Sure the furious speed of combat might be the draw, but if you look at it over the course of the years it really seems like has done nothing else BUT speed up. But maybe again I might be wrong. It seems like since the whole meta of achaea is to go as fast as possible, always, why couldn't it be slowed down to compensate for actual human inputs rather than pitching triggers against triggers?

    Replies the scorpion: "It's my nature..."
  • Personally, affliction combat has always been way, way too fast for me. I've enjoyed sylvan pre-weatherweaving because it was slow and simple, and post-weatherweaving because Austere is amazing. Trying to process everything that's going on to me as well as my opponents cures and afflictions and typing out the best response within two seconds is something that I don't know if I'll ever get down, and if I do it'll only be because automation has allowed me to begin to understand the flow of things.

    I think whether it's too fast can hugely depend on what class you play, really. I've toyed around with bm/monk/watched a lot of dual-blunt knight, and those have been pretty great because if I have to focus on my afflictions and forget to attack for a second or need to run out of the room for a breather because I don't know what's going on, I can do that and it only slows me down instead of messing me up. And I could play a propagation-focused sylvan and not worry much about afflictions, if I wanted to. So I think that "slower" options do exist right now, to some extent, but I also think that slowing things down/providing a practice mode that's slower could really help ease entry into a lot of popular, but affliction-centric classes.

  • HalosHalos The Reaches
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  • Slowed down would be great. Decisions that require .2s reaction speed when your Ping is .2-.3 are just ugh. I can't react that fast, but even if I could my internet would let me down. 

  • KayeilKayeil Washington State
    Just curious but wouldn't slower combat still be affected by ping, just making it even slower for those with a bad ping?
    What doesn't kill you gives you exp.

  • I've just picked up Imperian. Stuff seems a bit slower there, if super super wordy. 
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  • ShirszaeShirszae Santo Domingo
    Kayeil said:
    Just curious but wouldn't slower combat still be affected by ping, just making it even slower for those with a bad ping?
    Presumably, it'd give people with lower pings more time to react, though. Or more time for their internet to decide to stop being lazy and get the packets home :proud: 

    And you won't understand the cause of your grief...


    ...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.

  • Kayeil said:
    Just curious but wouldn't slower combat still be affected by ping, just making it even slower for those with a bad ping?
    Yes, we would still be impacted but less so.

  • I think a big thing to me is that we have had herbs on the 1.5 timer forever, salves on 1, resto on 4, etc. 
    However I think as curing advanced and coders began to find the most optimal way to survive, that 1.5 timer on herbs specifically was not quite enough. So offence got sped up or given new ways with how they interact with someone.
    This also applies, but less so to salve curing. some on the use of tree or mixing in restoration. The perfect curing set could never be vivisected, so the solution to that was frenzy, a way to speed up your attacks.

    Since systems have become more complex, the game has been designed to make things faster and faster to fit in the constraints of the nearly static herb/health/salve balances, rather than doing a full out re balancing of speeds that can still be fast and furious to play, but slow enough for a persons natural reflexes to take part in. 
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  • Valkyn said:
    Slowed down would be great. Decisions that require .2s reaction speed when your Ping is .2-.3 are just ugh. I can't react that fast, but even if I could my internet would let me down. 
    To be honest, let's not go with hyperbole. There are no decisions that require .2s reaction speed in Achaea on a regular basis. The fastest reaction speed you really need is Shaman, and that's still a whole second in general (given average human reaction time is .2-.3 seconds + .3 seconds of lag, that's pretty doable). Every other class doesn't even come close to that, and for defense, you definitely don't need to react that fast like ever unless you get into a really unlucky situation where your balance recovery and the other person's offense lines up completely perfectly somehow. Even then, prediction goes a long way.

    That said, I don't believe people would actually feel slower balance times all that much if everything was uniformly slowed. I hate playing slow balance classes now, yes, but if proportionally I stayed fast, I would definitely not mind. It'd be pretty great for helping people get into combat, and it's obvious that speeding up combat hasn't really fought automation as much as helped it in the end.


  • edited January 2016
    @Kiet it does affect it if your reaction time is below average, once you add in actual typing speed and such it's kind of rough.

    I really cannot respond and type fast enough to do serpent combat without some sort of offensive script. That's a bit sad. 

  • I know it seems disheartening and like, this isn't really helpful at all to you, but I used to play fast aff classes with 300 ping and it's totally doable, especially now that you have queueing. What you have to do is simply predict more. The more you practice the easier it gets to react, too, because your brain adapts to it and expects it. It's a lot like in street fighter you have over a second to anti-air someone jumping at you, but for new players this is too fast to react to. The more you play the less fast the game will seem to you.

    A lot of people turned off from combat are convinced they 'can't' do things, but you really, really can if you stick to it and believe in yourself.

    That doesn't mean combat should remain as is, though. It would be way better for a lot of people if it was uniformly slowed across the board, imo. But until then we have to deal with what we have.
  • I like the current speed of combat, but I do agree that an arena mode that is slowed down (maybe with a limited set of skills too?) would be fantastic.
  • edited January 2016
    @Kiet I've always been terrible at those sort of games. Or anything that requires quick reaction times. It's all very well saying 'you can learn it, I can, and this guy did', but some people are just MUCH better at this than others, just like with everything else. Yes with a lot of effort I could probably get competent at serpent combat, (I doubt I could ever be great) but is it worth that frustration? Probably not! I've managed other classes okay, but not serpent.

    I have a friend who is very very good with reacting to stuff quickly, some people are just naturally good, some people are naturally bad. I remember someone tipped over a drink when we were at burger king once as teenagers and he got himself and his bag out of the way before the drink spilled. He'd moved before I'd even processed what had happened. If I was in that seat, I would have been drenched.

    My skills lie in other areas, but it's a bit frustrating when the only option to some classes seems to be to script the hell out of them offensively as well as defensively. I accept this is how things are, but if given the option to vote for slowing it down a bit, hell yes I would!

  • edited January 2016
    Slowing down combat would be great.

    I don't really understand complaints about "long balances" being boring - are you really going to get bored if there's a four second interval instead of a two-second interval?

    Pretty much everyone in combat uses scripts, if not to automate aspects of fighting, then to automate something akin to record-keeping. And gagging and highlighting are huge. It's damn near impossible to fight without significant investment into customizing the way the game presents the information.

    The big problem would probably be how to scale it. If you just doubled every balance, I don't think that would work - there are almost certainly things that have pretty careful timings that don't work proportionally. It would be a really big undertaking.

    I think it would be a worthwhile undertaking - people have always talked about how the combat system in Achaea is so engrossing and complex and it's always been kind of a shame that there's a big OOC component to becoming competitive, above and beyond actual knowledge and strategising. But it would still be a really big undertaking.
  • edited January 2016
    I'm terrible at character vs character combat so this is one area of the game I can't really comment on intelligently.

    That being said, every time I've tried to learn combat, it has been too fast for me. I as a human being can't read what is happening, process it, and then react to it while also keeping track of afflictions, zillions of cures and combos, and curing systems that react almost instantaneously. That is before you factor in artefacts designed to make it even faster... 

    Ship combat presents no issue for me, so I feel like my problem with pvp is the speed and the over complexity. It also seems like most people have some kind of artificial-intelligence-super-script that does a lot of this stuff for them, and despite claims that these things are "easy", a high degree of coding skill is needed to really make them work. And nothing turns me off a game that is supposed to be an immersive experience more than boring meta requirements that have nothing to do with the game itself - in this case, learning to code, figuring out SVO/Wundersys, installing complicated client packages to change mudlet into an X-wing cockpit, or what have you. 

    I'm omni-trans and I don't even feel like I'm entry level.
  • Saeva said:
    Combat slowing down would it a lot more coherent and a lot less coded. Anything that takes away people's one button spam win inclinations and inspires them to use their brains is a nice idea.
    Why would combat be less coded? It would make the entry point easier, but ultimately I'm not sure why the prevalence of coding would change. It'd be just as easy and beneficial to keep one button spam. 
  • edited January 2016
    But it would be much easier not to - not in comparison to this 'one button spam kill', but in comparison to how it is now. It would make it much more viable to use less coding if you wanted.

  • It also might help the lag spikes some of us get in any group situation. 

  • Jovolo said:
    Saeva said:
    Combat slowing down would it a lot more coherent and a lot less coded. Anything that takes away people's one button spam win inclinations and inspires them to use their brains is a nice idea.
    Why would combat be less coded? It would make the entry point easier, but ultimately I'm not sure why the prevalence of coding would change. It'd be just as easy and beneficial to keep one button spam. 
    The prevalence of coding might not change, but it wouldn't matter nearly so much. That seems like the important point.

    And if coding were less necessary, you would probably see at least a little bit less coding - it'd change the cost-benefit balance of coding things and there are certainly people who wouldn't put in the time to code things if they could get away with a similar level of performance without them.

    But mostly it would open combat up to people who aren't interested in learning to code or in putting in the hours to actually write all the things.
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