Skill: Chase - Solution to lame raider scenes.

[Galdun]

I was reading the thread in Player Announcements regarding someone's dissapointing death at the hands of a raider, weighing the argument from both perspectives.

Perspective 1:
The raider just ran in and killed me without saying a word.

Perspective 2:
If I take time to drop one emote, my victim is just going to spam dash away.

THEN, somebody mentioned something about modifying the follow code and an idea hit me.  I call it...

Chase: A general skill that everyone has access to right off the bat.

The command would work like follow, however, the person you're pursuing cannot 'unhitch' you.  There are only two ways to break the pursuit, one of which would be endchase(a command entered by the pursuer), and the complete loss of stamina.  Now...while this 'chase' is initiated, stamina is drained at a substantially higher rate, even in cities, lets say 20 stamina per room.  So if you REALLY think you can outrun your pursuer, go for it!  But if you know that you can't, you're better off saving your stamina and playing out the scene.  This command could work well for so many situations.  And if it is a skill, someone could become better at chasing and perhaps lose less stamina in a chase.  The amounts would also have to be modified for certain animals to reflect their speed.  So here is an example...

You're minding your business in the Rinth, when...

A bandit comes darting out of the alley!

He types in: chase figure

You decide to give flight and type: e

You run east, but your stamina is draining 20 points per room!
Eventually you come to 20 stamina.  You run to the next room, and now you're out...you can't run any more...but the bandit hasn't even broken a sweat...his chase skill must be GOOD.  Now you can still emote...you can still talk...and the only thing you can do is beg him to take all you own and spare your life.  

As soon as he has what he wants from you, he types: endchase

He takes off into the shadows and leaves you to catch your breath.

-Scene-

Let me know what you all think.

[mansa]

I don't like the idea.

The "skill" gives too much power to the 'aggressor'.

You will have dwarves with their big stamina typing 'chase' on everybody.  And you can't outrun them, if you're an elf?  They are slow ass dwarves.


Consider this:

You're walking down a street, and someone comes up behind you, and types 'chase you'.  Now, you're still walking the same speed, and you've not even noticed it, but now you are taking 20 movement points to walk?

If that happened to me, I'd think that would be a bug.  Evenmoreso if the aggressor was hidden at the time.


Why are you losing movement points?  You can have people typing it 'everywhere' for no real reason.   It's too powerful of a "skill".

[psionic fungus]

There have been various forms of this idea floating about...
I don't really like it.

It only addresses the issue of fleeing victims, but no better than follow and/or hunt. What if your victim is faster than you, and gets a room or two ahead and out of your sight?  Are you still magically chasing them, even though they've hidden and sneaked two rooms in the opposite direction?  If not, what -real- advantage does this give you over 'follow'?

If there is an issue with people unhitching followers and running away too quickly for appropriate gameplay, then simply adjust the delay after 'hitch' (certainly even getting a mount ready to lead takes some time). If some twinky player wants to try to run away unrealistically you can sit there following and being unhitched over and over... Until you get fed up and just attack.

Simply, 'chase' does a poor job of addressing -one- issue, and doesn't address some of the other major issues surrounding the situation at all.  Something needs to be done to regulate raiders entering a room and doing insta-death combo attacks -and- victims being able to easily identify disguised raiders...

Approach code of some nature seems to be the most sensible option, and it can be used in so many other circumstances (like picking pockets, interacting with NPCs, peeking in packs, evesdropping on conversations, warming up by a fire, etcetera).

[BuNutzCola]

Would prefer simply ways to move along with your target as they flee.

A shady alley. [WNQuit]
Lots of stuff is here, subtley.

Amos is here, holding a large sack of coins.

> Chase amos
You set your sights on keeping up with Amos.

>Say (the available light glinting darkly on the obsidian head of his studded mace as he hefts it on his shoulder) Y'run for the last time, Amos. Tektolnes wants his money.

With a rude gesture, Amos says, in rinthi-accented sirihish:
"'e can take 'is money an' shove it, jus' try and take it neh?"

> Kill amos
You land a staggering blow to Amos' head with your bludgeon.

Amos attempts to flee!
Amos runs west.
You keep tail, sprinting after Amos.

End of a shady alley. [E]
There's no way out of here but through the guy you're running from.
Amos is here, bleeding heavily.

As you catch up, you lash out and continue combat.
You hit Amos on the wrist, doing frightening damage.
Amos crumples to the ground.

You think:
"Stupid feck, shouldn'a tried to run."


Success or fail might depend on your chase skill versus the victim's flee skill.

Amos attempts to flee!
You try to keep up, but lag behind.

[psionic fungus]

A simple (partial) solution just occured to me... Why not allow players to 'follow' anyone in their line-of-sight, and keep 'hitch' and 'unhitch' restricted to characters in the same room?  This would allow a raider or what-have-you to follow someone from a room behind while trying to catch up (or after being unhitched), but also allow the victim plenty of opportunities to escape.  This would have added benefits when used with stealth skills.

[BuNutzCola]

Approach code would be cool too, but largely I would only like it in the wilderness.  Yeah some city rooms are large too, but there are so many people it is not as easy as seeing someone ride up in the desert.

Or at least allow for approach to work in conjunction with sneak, so it's not a simple matter of

Amos starts approaching from the west.
>N

You hear amos say,
"Fuckin' twink. At least in the old days could get in an attack on the folks who're gonna dash off."

[psionic fungus]

Or at least allow for approach to work in conjunction with sneak, so it's not a simple matter of

Amos starts approaching from the west.
>N

You hear amos say,
"Fuckin' twink. At least in the old days could get in an attack on the folks who're gonna dash off."

I don't see approach working like that, really.  I see movement being as it is now.  Once you are in a room with someone, in order to engage them in melee combat, or another physical action, you have to 'approach' them or the object they are at.  It would -certainly- work with stealth skills.  This is actually where I see the greatest benefits of the system.

And, of course, there are always ranged weapons and ambushes to take care of the cowardly.

[Kennath]

Can't you shadow them, which basically allows you to follow them without getting unhitched?

[Armaddict]

I don't think raider scenes are lame.  And I'm rarely the raider.

Edited to add:

Seriously, I don't think raider scenes are so horrible.  You can get the same death in any 'live or die' situation in the game.  What it is, I think, is that when a raider comes and nabs you out of nowhere, acting like an intelligent NPC (which plays its role), it takes you by surprise.  You lose a character when you weren't expecting to, and you feel cheated.  I'm not above this feeling myself.

But you aren't cheated because you didn't get a long, luxurious death scene.  There aren't many situations in the game, currently, that allow for it.  Yes, it sucks to lose the character.  But please, stop calling everyone a twink, a lamer, or whatever just because they didn't do everything exactly how you wanted it done.

That being said...this particular idea, I don't see a need for.  I wouldn't mind 'enriched' raiding scenes, but I'm not talking about things that make it 'fair' for anyone. I'm talking about more variety.  Give the possibility of different ways to do it.

One day...I want the group I'm out with to get massacred by a hijacked wagon that's been transformed into a war-wagon.

Edited again to add:

Calling people bastards is still okay.  Because a lot of characters in the game are bastards.  But to use the ever popular phrase, "Don't hate the player, hate the game."

[psionic fungus]

No.... If you are visible and they know you are following them 'shadow' doesn't prevent you from being unhitched...

[Xio]

My suggestion for chase:
:arrow: Drop the whole upped stamina drain thing.
:arrow: Both chars will automatically be set to run (unless you really wanna walk and allow the other person to get the upperhand and run up to/away from you)
:arrow: When you initiate a 'chase' the other person should get an emit to the effect of 'Amos stares at you with malicious intent'
:arrow: If/when that person leaves the room (imo should make it only via flee) you will attempt to follow them and initiate combat if it hasn't already been done.
:arrow: When chasing someone you are constantly trying to catch up to them and subdue/beat them unconscious or to death.
:arrow: To 'unhitch' someone you either need to get lucky and just lose or outrun them. Or a specific 'shake' command that is either a separate skill or based on your chase skill.
:arrow: Maybe have a 'change' for chase for subdue and kill.
I might've left some stuff out, lemme know whatcha think.

[X-D]

Over all I like that...

Simply have a toggle on it.

chase subdue amos
chase kill amos

Be rather helpful for PC militia as well I think.

And I would add a slight delay to Both PC's after chase is initiated...Or have a one time question if the person does try to leave.

Something like.
Raider moves close looking ready
n
This will engage chase, if you really want to do this type "north now"

Both are just in case the player misses the engage chase message.

[Fnord]

Do not want.

[Maybe42or54]

Here is my idea to improve the chase command. Instead of having multiple commands, such as chase, watch, hunt, kill. I want to combine them all into a single command. I will use the command Hunt.

When you enter in the command, "hunt," it will automagickly set you to "watch your target," "kill target," and "hunt target."

Hunt, of course will use your skills in hunt and watch to decide how effective you are at this command.

Let's see it in action.

Desert Room [NESW]
It is a deserty desert.

Hide
You take cover in the bushes.

The short man arrived from the north, carrying a bag of gold.

Someone says, in sirihish, "Merchant, lay down your gold, or I will kill you."

You think, "Uh.."

The short man drops his small bag.

The short man runs east.

Someone climbs out from the bushes and picks up the bag of gold.

The lean, dirty elf picks up the small bag.

Hunt dirty
You begin hunting the lean, dirty elf.
The lean, dirty elf parries your slash.
The lean, dirty elf is nicked by your chop.

The lean, dirty elf panics and attempts to flee.
The lean, dirty elf flees north.

To the north, the lean, dirty elf runs east.

To the northeast, the lean, dirty elf runs north.

N

Desert room [NESW]

Someone moved swiftly in from the south and to the east.

E
Desert Room [NESW]

Someone moved swiftly in from the west.

You think, "Fuck, this ground is too hard to follow tracks."

(After a little while, our lucky bandit catches up to the elf)

To the north, the lean, dirty elf has arrived from the east.
To the north, the lean, dirty elf runs south.

The lean dirty elf has arrived from the north.

The lean, dirty elf gets devastated by your slash.
The lean, dirty elf parries your chop.

[mansa]

About 7 years ago....

I had a character who stood at the gates of Allanak, and someone walked up to me, and typed 'follow me'.

I quickly typed, 'unhitch character'.

That character then went OOC and said, 'Personally, I think that's pretty bad roleplay.  You have no idea that I'm following you, because we haven't moved any rooms.'

Now, as a brand new character, that affected me and what I thought was 'good' or 'bad' roleplay.



There's two schools of thought here:
1) You don't know someone is following you, if your character isn't paranoid.  You may walk 10 rooms and still not know someone is following you.  Consider various movies; the hero seems to be the super spy, who knows fighting techniques, and always talks to the 'sidekick' and says, 'I think that car is following us.'  Your character -could- be the sidekick, and not notice these things.  You might be sitting in a tavern, and someone starts talking to you from across the bar, and you might not notice it.


2) Your character knows everything that ever echos to the screen.  When someone 'looks' at you, you know they are looking at you, right away.  When someone follows you, you know they are following you, right away.  When someone talks to you, you know they are talking to you, right away.

People play on both extremes of this, and people play in the middle, or whatever suits their needs at the time.

As I have evolved in my roleplaying style on ArmageddonMUD,  I seem to be playing in the first school of thought, lately.  I play like my character might not be paying attention to you, when you talk to me.  I play like my character hasn't noticed a templar walk into the room, and is standing behind me - because my character is staring in his drink at the bar.

I'm telling you how I play.  Some of you might consider mimicking a little aspect of my 'style', and some might not.

[psionic fungus]

What you say is truth, mansa, but also remember that there is now a command for anyone to use if they want to start following without the other party noticing.  The watch skill may even be incorporated.  When there is the option, and especially when skill checks are involved, I will use the coded commands to avoid any possible abuses.

As I said before, I would like to see 'follow' and 'watch' linked, as it makes sense you would have to watch someone to follow them, and it could allow you to follow someone from a room behind, if your skill was good enough.

[Angela Christine]

As I said before, I would like to see 'follow' and 'watch' linked, as it makes sense you would have to watch someone to follow them, and it could allow you to follow someone from a room behind, if your skill was good enough.

That makes sense when you are surreptitiously trailing someone, but I'm not sure it holds true when you are merely using the Follow command to keep a large group together.  

If a dozen people are all following the leader, most of them are not going to be watching the leader closely, some of them may not be able to see the leader very well at all.  As long as you aren't in a situation where you have to follow exactly in the leader's footsteps or face certain death, you don't have to watch anyone closely to stay aware of the group.  Follow is the closest thing we have to a "group" command.  Making Follow invoke Watch would mean that no one could Scan, and no one could Watch your tail.  The leader would be the only one with any perception flexibility, so a group of 6 people would have no better perceptive ability than a loner.

[mansa]

Perhaps there should be a group command or skill...  mmm

[Majikal]

Follow, shadow, chase I could see these all working together. Follow allows for the leading party to unhitch so using it in a raider chase.. eh.. it's not to useful. Shadow as we all know is the hidden version of follow where you try to track the target unseen, but chase could be the version of follow where the leading party doesn't get to unhitch you. As chase skill goes up the less likely you are to randomly stop chasing the target either because they lost you running, the agility code would let faster people simply outrun their targets by making them lag behind like we do now, hiding would break someone chasing you or perhaps a successful sneak.

Code Select Expand


Middle of Nowhere [ne]
amos is here, fighting you

>flee
you flee head over heals

amos arrives from the west

amos begins chasing you!

>n
chasing you, amos arrives from the south

>n
chasing you, amos arrives from the south

>unhitch amos
you can't, he's chasing you!

>n
chasing you, amos arrives from the south

>n
amos lags behind, unable to keep up



OR

Code Select Expand


Middle of Nowhere [ne]
amos is here, fighting you

>flee
you flee head over heals

amos arrives from the west

amos begins chasing you!

>n
chasing you, amos arrives from the south

>hide
you begin looking for a place to hide
you attempt to hide yourself

amos quits chasing you.

amos says Ooc: "Damn.. that sucks."


[Coat of Arms]

I don't like the idea as it was laid out. Immense stamina drain for no reason other than an apparent OOC penalty does not belong in this game, especially if you're somhow forced into it as soon as someone types "chase guy".

While it would be interesting to see a skill that lets one PC chase another, I have to stop and wonder what it would solve. As poor as it is, there's currently a sort of balance between aggressors and victims because either one can (and usually does) take the purely coded approach. If you let the aggressor have a pretty much guaranteed "win" every single time, with a chase skill, then we'd probably get dozens of posts like the one that sparked this thread. Imagine how easy it would be for a d-elf to raid just about anybody if they're always guaranteed to catch their target. That's what the result will be: raiders, muggers and murderers would have a failproof way of making sure that they'd always catch a target, as long as they didn't give the target time to hide or cast a spell. Which we all know they won't.

[Coat of Arms]

I think one step toward an acceptable goal is a better representation of movement speeds. It should depend on more than your race, although that should be a big part of it as well.

Agility could be a big factor in how fast your character can run. It makes sense, and might possibly steer players away from simply choosing str->end->agi->wis as priority for all of their warrior characters.

A running skill might work, although I'm not really sure how to do it properly. Maybe it would start at a race-determined base plus agility modifier, and be heavily restricted in how often it can be improved.

Endurance should be a much, much, much bigger factor in how far you can run. I always thought this was one of the weakest points of the stat code; you can have below average endurance, and two pieces of stamina equipment will even out the difference between you and someone with extremely good endurance. It's utterly unrealistic.

[psionic fungus]

chase could be the version of follow where the leading party doesn't get to unhitch you. As chase skill goes up the less likely you are to randomly stop chasing the target either because they lost you running, the agility code would let faster people simply outrun their targets by making them lag behind like we do now, hiding would break someone chasing you or perhaps a successful sneak.

I simply do not like this idea.  How and why can someone chase me if they cannot see me?  It's not 'random' to stop chasing someone when you can no longer see where they are.  This 'skill' seems to do little but make a twinkified, non-logical version of 'follow'.  Why?

As I said before, all you need to do is make it so that 'unhitch' has a larger delay than 'follow', and all this unhitching unfairly business is history.  If you then make a -simple- code change so you can follow anyone in your line-of-sight (via watch, which you should also be able to do to anyone in your line-of-sight), you have improved 'chase' scenes by 200% and done very little work to do so.

I don't think we need to have a bunch of obtuse commands like 'follow', 'shadow', -and- 'chase'.  I think it makes a lot more sense if the 'follow' code were to automatically 'shadow' if you were hidden or sneaking, and 'chasing' were simply circumstantial as well (remember to 'run').

[X-D]

At least for Arm 1.0, I have to agree with PF.

For everything 'cept approach. Which, though it looks good on paper, I've never seen it done in a manner that was not kludgy and turn me off.

[psionic fungus]

Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it isn't possible.

I have seen half of the features Armageddon currently has done in -terrible-, ugly, and sometimes unplayable ways.  That doesn't mean it is the only way they can be done.

I simply think that for any action that requires you to be within touching distance of another character, you should have to 'approach' them.  I can see exactly how this would function, in a variety of circumstances, to bring much needed depth and regulation.  It makes so much sense it hurts.

Wilderness rooms, of course, could give additional delays to 'approach', so that it would take longer for a raider in the wilderness to approach you, than say it takes a merchant to approach you in the tavern.

Shit!  I'm running late for work!

[jhunter]

I disagree with using the follow command on someone that may not want you following them in the current version of the game. Follow works without error and using it to follow someone that doesn't want you following them is cheating IMO. If you follow me in the current version of the game the way it works now, expect me to immediately unhitch you if I don't want you following me.
Otherwise, use shadow or follow me manually as that is more realistic than using infallible code to chase me down when I'm working to evade you.