If you were a newbie combatant....

Tael · March 2013

I haven't read this entire thread, but my feelings:

Like many others, I've been playing Achaea for about a decade. I've been dipping my toes in combat more seriously for the past...five? And I'm still terribad.

Crucially, while information might be a stumbling block for newbies, removing that block does not solve the problems at all. I know a stupid amount of information about nearly every combat ability. I still have difficulty managing even a basic setup as a serpent (or, historically, any class). I have trouble paying attention to the amount of information flying across the screen even 1v1, even with highlights. It took me RL years to figure out how to do even the most basic combat strategy possible for my class against a completely unconfigured system.

The defensive bar for newbies is overwhelming, but the information isn't that hard to come by and it's nothing compared to the bar set by systems against managing a lethal attack routine. It's ridiculously hard for many classes to learn how to beat a newbie with svo who's just standing there doing nothing. And if they're hindering at all? Forget about it. The only mitigating factor is backroom dealing in known "tricks" that popular systems can't deal with, which reduces combat to trying to figure out if someone is using svo and then pressing an "I win" button (and those tricks usually get fixed eventually too).

On the other hand, I would absolutely hate to see it become a "who can think and type fastest" contest. If there's anything that the current predicament has going for it, it's that it offers something like half of an olive branch to people who can't think and type so quickly. Manual was hell and I would never want to go back. The interesting stuff in Achaean combat is in the offence anyway - once you know the cures, there isn't really a lot of fun to be had in pressing buttons to make them happen, so along that dimension, I think the current situation is an improvement over the old.

Some concrete suggestions:

1) Crucial combat skills should be moved down. It should be possible to start fighting as your class early on. Maybe you don't have access to all of the little tricks and different strategies, but the number of skills you have to trans to implement basic strategy for a lot of classes is a significant problem. Basic, essential combat skills like clotting shouldn't be nearly as costly as they are. It would be nice for someone to go through the skills with some basic guideline like "a class should be able to implement basic offensive and defensive strategy if all of their skills are at adept/skilled/whatever". Should I have wormholes and darkbows early on? No. Should I have doublestab and envenom early on? Absolutely.

Also, I expect this would be good for business - there have always been complaints over the years that the amount of investment necessary to do basic combat things makes Achaea's "free to play" thing seem like a scam. If people could do basic combat early on, that criticism largely evaporates and you stop bleeding those potential customers who would be happy to pay if they didn't feel unfairly pressured. And the existence of other useful and interesting skills allowing for more variety, effectiveness, and convenience would still provide plenty of incentive to trans things.

2) Admin should start participating in combat again. Or hire someone who knows modern combat and actually listen to them. So many of the changes seem to be based on a somewhat abstract idea of what combat in the game is like rather than what it's actually like.

3) The obvious solution to a lot of problems is server-side curing. But it would crucially have to be real server-side curing, not some half-assed thing to help "ease newbies into it" by having the server periodically tick and auto-cure something. That's the gaming equivalent of Stockholm syndrome - you're not solving the problem, you're just breaking their spirits more gently before they see how truly soul-rending it's going to get. In many ways, it's probably worse that not giving them any curing at all since they're going to feel like they have no idea how other people are so much more effective than them and get frustrated. Tick-based server curing is like a fairly slow manual player - there's just no way for them to compete against a newb with even an unconfigured bought system.

If it were going to work, and I can see absolutely no reason why it wouldn't, it would have to cure instantly and be as configurable as any other system. I don't think this is actually too tremendous a thing to do either - just have characters auto-cure on afflictions (have affliction and herb/salve/whateverbalance events trigger curing subroutines (sip/apply/light+smoke/outr+eat) rather than using a server-wide tick) according to a priority list that could be modified using commands. An autosip/moss system would work similarly, with eating/sipping triggered by damage and sip/mossbalance events rather than on a server tick with a configurable percentage to sip/eat at.

That leaves room for coding a more sophisticated system that shifts priorities intelligently (which is, I think, a good thing) and keeps plenty of room for convenience coding (like def management or scripts that automatically figure out the direction to snipe) that any sort of prohibition against coding would get rid of. And it means that you don't have newbies scared away by having to buy/understand systems, which is, in economic terms, particularly bad since payment for the systems that are essentially prerequisites to combat doesn't even go to IRE.

Perhaps even more importantly, it would kill two birds with one stone: helping make it easier to get into the game and actually helping players with high ping to participate in combat. A really ideal solution would be to couple server-side curing with a simple little balance queue (it could even be a queue that can only contain one block of commands that all get executed at once on the next balance (it has to be a block since often you need to do something like envenom along with your attack)) and you'd have a way for high ping people to compete on roughly even footing.

It would even make balancing easier since you could know what speed people would actually do things at rather than the current system where things get fuzzy with variable latency.

And it would be easy to build more interesting little IC things into it too - like store a small database for each character with a flag for every affliction and don't have the server-side curing work for the affliction until the person's cured it manually once. So they still need to "learn the cures", you get IC justification, and you build in a clear goal for newbie combatants that essentially tricks them into learning how the combat system works under the guise of getting the server-side curing to work against different abilities.

It helps people with offence too - having to go up against a basic prio system for most lowbies and midbies is miles better than the current situation of having to go up against svo or omni.

It's even better for people who don't get into PvP - I can't count the number of newbies who I've seen quit as soon as someone tried to explain how to make a simple macro to sip. And something as basic as an autosipper? Forget about it. Having an auto-sipper built in (with some reasonable default value even) and being able to say to a newbie "here's a sword and a vial of vitality - to hunt, WIELD your shortsword and SLASH the monster" would, I expect, do wonderful things for retention. I work with new players all the time and I'm pretty confident that a lot of them who QQ'd and never showed up again would still be here if it were that simple to get started.

Again, it is absolutely fundamental that the curing be instant and completely reconfigurable. There has to be a reason to use it over client-side curing systems or you haven't solved the problem. The strength here is that you provide newbies with it rather than forcing them to buy and learn to install and use a client-side system and that the default curing is actually worse than current systems.

Edit: Illusions would be tougher, but not terribly. First, put in a command (heck, you could even make it part of survival) to ignore an affliction. Then, either make it possible to directly illusion afflictions via command (keeping custom illusions too) or match illusion text against a list of affliction strings whenever someone uses an illusion (more computationally costly, but it's a simple string match and illusion takes balance, so I can't imagine it'd be a problem).

Wattsee · March 2013

Now this might just be me, but after asking and having roughly 6 forum pages of players suggesting (generally) that things be more transparent so that newbies and everyone in general could understand skills, it seems a bit strange to rework the Traits system and add absolutely no transparency.

Tael · March 2013

Since I can't edit the post anymore and I just finished actually reading through the full thread,

TL;DR: Real server-side curing would still preserve the interesting complexity of combat in the game, eliminate the stumbling block of acquiring and setting up a system, and provide an incentive (faster curing) to use the server-side system instead of just immediately buying a more capable system. You could still have client-side systems on top of the server-side curing to manage server-side priorities better, but they would crucially be extensions rather than replacements - I suspect that would change their patterns of proliferations pretty significantly. As an added benefit, with a simple, single-block balance queue, it would also open the game up more to people with higher ping.

Also, I forgot to add that it would allow the curing to be system-agnostic. A lot of people use and recommend Mudlet. Having a bundled system of scripts for the HTML5 client would be really ugly in that you wouldn't have them to build off of as a base if you decide to switch to Mudlet. It also still offers no counter-incentive not to just immediately buy svo and have a better system (hell, why bother learning the bundled stuff if you're going to do svo eventually anyway) - you still have the problem of equally new combatants being potentially very unevenly matched. Technically, you could still get a prio-management system if there were server-side curing, but I think fewer people would think of it as an immediate necessity compared to right now or even if there were a bundled set of reflexes. The ideal situation is one in which newbies don't even have to know that there's "code" involved at all, not one in which they're handed a big pile of code they don't understand.

Llyth · March 2013

Sarapis said:

What are the things you would find most confusing/challenging/frustrating about combat without a system?

The fact there is a lack of common understanding for people using HTML5.

Iocun · March 2013

Tael said:
2) Admin should start participating in combat again. Or hire someone who knows modern combat and actually listen to them. So many of the changes seem to be based on a somewhat abstract idea of what combat in the game is like rather than what it's actually like.

What about the ACC?

Nellaundra · March 2013

Secondhand still doesn't match doing it yourself.

Iocun · March 2013

But twenty eyes are better than two!

Xith · March 2013

Iocun said:

But twenty eyes are better than two!

Deadeyes would be an understatement.

Tael · March 2013

Iocun said:

But twenty eyes are better than two!

The ACC is great, but my impression has always been that they're in a sort of advisory position more so than a decision-making one.

Having twenty player eyes and the eyes of an actual admin would be nice.

Iocun · March 2013

Tael said:

The ACC is great, but my impression has always been that they're in a sort of advisory position more so than a decision-making one.
Having twenty player eyes and the eyes of an actual admin would be nice.

Well, you said "or hire someone who knows modern combat and actually listen to them", and that's pretty much the idea behind the ACC. Sure, it's Tecton who actually makes the decisions, but those decisions are noticeably influenced by players with combat experience. Sure, he could also make a mortal and do some combat (and for all we know he might actually already be doing that), but it's always going to remain an incomplete view, without spending countless hours delving into the combat tactics of every single class and fighting tons of people with them, which would quite reduce the time left to actually code stuff.

Ada · March 2013

Publicly available curing systems let you at least start trying out offensive even if you don't know what's happening to you and how the system is handling it. You'll eventually start figuring out how to get around your opponent's defense and in most cases even beat people as your gain better understanding.

Props to @Carmain and @Vadimuses for making these things available.

Oh, and more :x to @Jaiko for sparklie things ^_^

Shadizar · March 2013

If this suggestion has been previously mentioned I apologize to whomever posted but I don't recall seeing it. Anyways, I'm a beginner combatant and I can afford to drop cash on Achaea (to some extent) for lessons and some light arties. I also greatly enjoy bashing. What I am now seeing is my might going up and up and my level hitting the 90's but my skill level in combat staying exactly the same. Might and level wise I'm on par with most marks. Skill wise I'm on par with most newbies coming up with an interest in pvp. Not only do I think the might percentage should be changed to something more in line with lesson learning, I think a seperate ranking for pvp should be added. To replace might should be "knowledge". Lessons learned do give an obvious advantage in pvp but do not reflect skill and experience. For example, So-and-so is considered to be 90% more knowledgeable than you. Maybe someone could think of a better flavor line, but "might" shouldn't be it. Below xp rank should be pvp rank. This could be weighted on arena wins and losses, out of arena wins and losses, whether you were in a party when slain or got the kill, in a city or not etc. Something that is much more accurate an indicator than looking for someone who is close to your level and lessons.

Eld · March 2013

Shadizar said:

If this suggestion has been previously mentioned I apologize to whomever posted but I don't recall seeing it. Anyways, I'm a beginner combatant and I can afford to drop cash on Achaea (to some extent) for lessons and some light arties. I also greatly enjoy bashing. What I am now seeing is my might going up and up and my level hitting the 90's but my skill level in combat staying exactly the same. Might and level wise I'm on par with most marks. Skill wise I'm on par with most newbies coming up with an interest in pvp. Not only do I think the might percentage should be changed to something more in line with lesson learning, I think a seperate ranking for pvp should be added. To replace might should be "knowledge". Lessons learned do give an obvious advantage in pvp but do not reflect skill and experience. For example, So-and-so is considered to be 90% more knowledgeable than you. Maybe someone could think of a better flavor line, but "might" shouldn't be it. Below xp rank should be pvp rank. This could be weighted on arena wins and losses, out of arena wins and losses, whether you were in a party when slain or got the kill, in a city or not etc. Something that is much more accurate an indicator than looking for someone who is close to your level and lessons.

Not sure exactly what you mean by "more in line with lesson learning" but might currently is just an indicator of how many lessons you've learned, nothing more, nothing less. There are combat rankings, but they're an opt-in system and not everyone (or even most people) interested in pvp joins them. Trying to track pvp kills outside of an arena context would be pretty tricky, I think.

Rajan · March 2013

Actually, level does have a small effect on might. Lessons much more so, but I've seen might move by 5% simply by getting a new level. As for ranking out of arena skill, you could go by the kill/death numbers in STATS STAT. Still not a great indicator of skill, but it's something.

Shadizar · March 2013

@eld for might percentage being more in line with lesson learning I just meant the flavor line itself. Speaking for myself, I just think the word "might" is misleading when it is only referring to lessons learned. If your going to even have a might line at all you may as well attach a percentage to most artefacts to add onto it as well.

Iocun · March 2013

It would be pretty much impossible to make an automated ranking system that manages to rate people's PvP skill/knowledge in any accurate way. Most out-of-arena kills aren't the results of straight 1v1 duels, but involve teams, and getting many kill shots vs. deaths in team situations doesn't prove that you are a skilled combatant. It may be because you're a member of a class that's good at stealing kills. It may be because you're always part of the larger/stronger group. It may be because you fight extremely carefully and run away if there's any chance of you getting killed. It may be because you have good buddies that want to help you to get many kills. It may be because you only select targets you know you can win against.

Arena spars have a bit less variables there, since they're always 1v1, but just because someone is good in 1v1 arena spars doesn't mean he's the best in all kinds of combat situations. But still: there already exists a ranking for that, but it only really measures those who voluntarily participate in that kind of ranking. There are many fighters who barely ever fight in the arena, and others who are rather successful in the arena but just can't quite cut it in group fights outside (my kill/death rate in STAT STATS is absolutely horrid, for example).

So any sort of PvP ranking is never going to quite capture the full truth, even without taking into account that different classes and different levels of equipment etc. can't ever be compared accurately with each other.

I do however agree with you that "might" is a very misleading nomenclature. Might does make a relevant difference at low skill levels, but once people have transed three or four skills, it becomes much less relevant and the way it's presented in HONOURS makes it appear much more meaningful than it truly is.

The only somewhat accurate way to assess whether somebody is more "powerful" than you is to ask tons of people, really.

Drauka · March 2013

I'm a programmer and I want to play this game to relax and let go. I don't want to work to code my own systems, I don't want to have some work while I'm not working so I can work in my not work [time].

Systems like Svo have allowed me to focus more on the parts of the game I want to focus on. Not having a good system used to be a pain in the butt because you were just at such a disadvantage.

It's not that I can't do it, it's just that I don't want to do it. This is a game and I don't want to be a job. I don't really care, personally, if others feel it may be destroying some impression of this golden age where all things were perfect and wonderful back in the day, but things change, just like everything else in life. Move on and remember it's still a game and it still is awesome. Have fun

If I'm not getting what I want from a game, an entirely optional allocation of my time and resources, I won't play it. That is very reasonable, in my opinion.

Iocun · March 2013

I don't think anybody demanded that everybody must code his own system.

Sidonia · March 2013

Daloc did

Valden · March 2013

On the flip side I'm a programmer and I like scripting systems to relax. But I don't expect everyone to be like me.

Skye · March 2013

Before I say anything, I'm just like to thank admin as an aside for the sipper plugin on their web client. You have no idea how much easier that made life when logging on from the site >_>

When I first started playing, all I had were a bunch of triggers and aliases on mushclient. I didn't have a shred of an idea how to do anything more than that and anything more complicated just confused me. It still confuses me, but back then, like Jhui said, there were a lot more noobs and they too were noobs without a complex system so everyone held their own and with some idea of how combat worked, could fumble their way around.

The thing is, things have just... progressed. Just like in real life, having a degree was pretty damn fantastic, now HR just tells you to get in line with all the other paper holders. Similarly, most people have a purchased system because everyone else has one and combat is complicated enough to figure out without trying to multi-task your healing at the same time. If you dont' have one, you've essentially fallen behind.

Systems have made Houses have to rethink alot of things. From how they test a novice's geography to their healing. That's nobody's fault really, that's just how things change.

Having said that, it feels very much like most of the 'best fighters' are divided into the ones with a lot of arties who just plain outdamage you and the ones who have figured out some kind of mad hax trick to 'break' systems.

Eld · March 2013

Skye said:

Before I say anything, I'm just like to thank admin as an aside for the sipper plugin on their web client. You have no idea how much easier that made life when logging on from the site >_>

When I first started playing, all I had were a bunch of triggers and aliases on mushclient. I didn't have a shred of an idea how to do anything more than that and anything more complicated just confused me. It still confuses me, but back then, like Jhui said, there were a lot more noobs and they too were noobs without a complex system so everyone held their own and with some idea of how combat worked, could fumble their way around.

The thing is, things have just... progressed. Just like in real life, having a degree was pretty damn fantastic, now HR just tells you to get in line with all the other paper holders. Similarly, most people have a purchased system because everyone else has one and combat is complicated enough to figure out without trying to multi-task your healing at the same time. If you dont' have one, you've essentially fallen behind.

Systems have made Houses have to rethink alot of things. From how they test a novice's geography to their healing. That's nobody's fault really, that's just how things change.

Having said that, it feels very much like most of the 'best fighters' are divided into the ones with a lot of arties who just plain outdamage you and the ones who have figured out some kind of mad hax trick to 'break' systems.

Agreed with most of this, except the last couple sentences. There's still a very noticeable gap between fighters who can wrap their head around the flow of combat well enough to recognise their opponent's strategy (both in curing and in offense) and adjust their own offense and defense accordingly, and those (like myself) who can't. Two people with the same system can have wildly different success rates in combat based on how well they can do that, independent of number of artefacts or system-breaking tricks (understood to mean relying on essentially ooc knowledge about how the system is coded, rather than IG observables like curing priorities). Those things certainly can be used to win a reasonable number of fights against mid-tier fighters, but my impression is that they're rarely sufficient at the high end; Cain can kill plenty of people in a few staffcasts before they have a chance to really start mounting an offense, but I don't think I've ever seen him referenced as a top-tier combatant, for example.

Mishgul · March 2013

The gap between tiers is very small. You'll see more and more people who were once considered high tier losing a lot more now. A lot of them prefer to raid now, or will go monk/magi.

Eld · March 2013

Mishgul said:

The gap between tiers is very small. You'll see more and more people who were once considered high tier losing a lot more now. A lot of them prefer to raid now, or will go monk/magi.

I dunno, maybe it's just a matter of perspective, but from my side of that gap it looks huge. Reading combat logs or discussions about strategy from people like you, Mizik, Jhui, Iocun, etc, there seems to be a pretty clear qualitative difference in your understanding of combat mechanics compared to mine that I can't really imagine making up with more artefacts or a better system (though admittedly a better system would definitely help in terms of keeping track of afflictions and the like).

Mishgul · March 2013

Understanding there might be a hug gap yes, but application is different. A lot of people can just look at someones tactics and attempt to emulate them. This is made easier by people like me exploiting and publicising how easy it is to defend yourself from a lot of tactics. less worrying about yourself, more worrying about copying what the cool guys are doing. This leads to a playing field that is getting more and more level every day.

Garao · March 2013

There's a big difference in understanding and then winning fights.

Tasleus · March 2013

Gap between tiers aside, I have to say that when I started this game, I was much like @Skye in the fact that I really had no idea what I was even doing in combat. I'm still there, practically, but the curve in itself... I'm gonna say something crazy here :

The current curve of combat difficulty is actually a little attractive.

WTF are you saying, Tasleus?

Well, think about it this way. There are top tier combatants who really have a strong footprint in the roleplay of Achaea and most of them are solid amazing combatants that don't allow a learning curve to hold them back. They're good because they busted their asses to get there and they deserved it.

Yes, combat is hard. Yes, the learning curve is damn steep. Yes, noobies who enter the game have it rough, but so did I when I entered. And you - Yes, you, @Bonko - No really, everyone reading this started as a terribad combatant at one point. No one handed them a system and said "Hey, against blademasters do this; against Runewardes do this just run; etc. You all learned it through experience and ACTUALLY SPARRING.

Hell, I've probably spent more gold on arena fees than the current credit market has for sale.

Make the level curve attractive for newbies? TRUE NEWBIES? Sure, go right ahead. That'd be great.

But alter any other section of that level curve? No way, man. It'd kill it.

Yue · March 2013

@Druaka - your post prompted me to say that one of the aspects of Achaea that is thoroughly enjoyable to me is developing my system. Not necessarily curing specifically, but scripting an intuitive interface to your skills and such is part of the fun. Just IMO.

I second those who have said that the complexity of the game is part of the enjoyment. Simplifying combat will lose players, not bring new ones in.

Skye · March 2013

it actually really depends on how they go about it. if IRE decides to include built in defense packages to take away the complexity of coding as a way of helping new players keep up, then it really is no different from now with open systems like Omni and paid systems like SVO, except that it's been brought to them instead of someone introducing them to the system.

That said, I think what I kinda didn't make clear is that core complexity of combat hasn't actually changed, as is reflected by every true newbie who comes our way who doesn't have a clue what to do. Everyone used to have only rope and climbed the Combat Difficulty Mountain with their bare hands, now they can get free spiky boots and winches and gloves if they know where to look. I would not see it amiss if IRE decided to give spiky boots and winches to everyone from the get go because frankly there is very little difference now for active combatants. If they're not facing an IRE brand using nublet, they'll be facing nublets using SVO and Omni anyway.

I don't think they would lose any players from the move, but they might gain more long-term casual players who won't as intimidated by all the doohickies that go on in the background.

Tvistor · March 2013

I don't mind base functionality. The thing is that they might come across a novel tactic, and instead of managing to scale a particularly difficult part of 'Combat Difficulty Mountain' it's possible to just call for help, wherein someone will put up a rope ladder for you.

It doesn't apply to every strategy, since quite a few require you to take action yourself, but I'm reminded of how Hhaos had to be hide his fairly good illusion (in that log vs Caladbolg) because it would get fixed for everyone, despite the fact most people would never have encountered it.

In other news Skye's signature is hypnotizing.

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If you were a newbie combatant....

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