Sparring.

[RogueGunslinger]

I can't really put it any other way, but in the current incarnation of Arm, I absolutely fucking hate sparring. There are just issues with using normal combat code with slightly reduced damage to spar with that make it unrealistic. There should be no reason, why during a sparring match, anyone should ever be dropping half their life and not be able to regain it.

Sure, you could say that sometimes sparring is dangerous.. but you know what? It isn't. I can say, that without a doubt, if you take all the precautions needed during a spar(with or without weapons) People rarely, if ever, get injured to the point that they cannot spar anymore.

I think there should be some form of modification on sparring weapons that simply makes them take more stamina from you, then HP from the person you hit, and it should never take more than a couple points of hp at a time. That way you can accurately roleplay being tired, and somewhat beaten up as well.


Sparring just isn't fun for me unless I'm against an equally matched player. It either ends up where I sacrifice emoting because I'm afraid for my character, or I sacrifice emoting because I'm afraid for theirs. Obviously this is a flawed system.

I'd like to see changes go in for 1.arm, but that just doesn't seem like it's going to happen, and it's kind of depressing. Mostly I think it's because of a lack of ideas, or workarounds with the current code. I'm sure the coders don't want to re-work an entire code for sparring(which is what i'd like, a lot) so does anyone have any ideas?

[Cutthroat]

How about adding a 'spar' command that functions similarly to kill and hit (as in it brings your character into combat), but stops at around the same point that brawling stops, and any damage that goes over that stopping point automatically stops combat. That way you can only get seriously injured if you're, say, brawling a HG, or brawling someone that is vastly more skilled than you. Everything else you mentioned seems okay (viz. when you mentioned changing from hp loss to stamina loss) though I would suggest some stun loss as well. Being hit by blunted sparring weapons should be somewhat like being hit by a club, but not entirely.

> spar amos
Everyone else sees: The muscular, tall woman attacks the tall, muscular man.
100/100 hp

etc etc etc.

The tall, muscular man pierces your foot.
75/100 hp

The tall, muscular man looks over you with pity and stops (or whatever the message is)

And if you want to stage a "sparring accident" simply use kill or hit. The initiation message seen by all would be the same.

[RogueGunslinger]

That would be pretty awesome, don't know how coding it would be though.

[brytta.leofa]

Is it really necessary to unrealistically drain stamina or health?  Seems like skill timers should be enough to prevent people from twinking.

[Synthesis]

Is it really necessary to unrealistically drain stamina or health?  Seems like skill timers should be enough to prevent people from twinking.

brytta.leofa hits the nail's head, connecting hard.

Further, just to add another random gripe:  since the defense nerf, sparring between non-warrior guilds is fucking ABSURD.  Your ability to defend yourself is practically nil once your partner's weapon skill reaches a certain point...and since skill improvements are based on failures...nobody improves after a while, because neither one of you can dodge the other's attacks.  Shield use would help here, except that warriors (the only guild that really doesn't even -need- to use shields) are apparently the only ones who get a practically useful maximum in the skill.

Sparring eventually becomes this ridiculous scene where you just batter the hell out of each other, and the fight is over after each person swings a few times.  How in the hell could you -possibly- be so good with a weapon that you can disembowel a dude in 2 strokes, yet inexplicably be entirely unable to prevent the same from happening to you?

[RogueGunslinger]

I think it should realistically drain stamina. If you've ever gone sparring in most martial arts they fatigue you.

It should hardly ever drain health.

I hate how skills progress through sparring. I also hate that its as simple as, the more you codedly spar, the better you are. I wish there were more modifiers that determined how good you became at combat. Sparring with someone who is more skilled than you should return more knowledge(skill boost). Sparring with the same person a multitude of times should reduce the amount of gain with them over time. Sparring with someone who is codedly less powerful than you should return less gain, but should increase your ability to use the Teach command and give more bonuses when used. All these things I'd like to see, but are very unlikely to go in.

[nyrk]

But how then do you "accidentally" off someone through a sparring accident with these changes?

[brytta.leofa]

Agree re: stamina drain, but I don't think it should be any more tiring than actually fighting.

Possibly we need something like a two-stage stamina system, where the first 20% comes and goes easily:
(1) You fight the gith.
(2) You kill the gith.
(3) You are out of breath, but
(4) Even in the desert, you're able to fairly quickly recover without resting (unless you've gotten yourself seriously torqued).

Coincidentally, that would come very close to providing the "travel really slow, travel really long" ability that several people have been asking for.  Ride slow and emote, and you can ride all day.

But how then do you "accidentally" off someone through a sparring accident with these changes?

How do you accidentally kill someone in your martial arts class?  Probably with backstab, sap, or a real weapon.

[RogueGunslinger]

If you intend to kill someone while you're beating them down with blunted weapons , but make it look like an accident...  Good luck. Heh. That just isn't a realistic option.

[a strange shadow]

Because nobody ever died from blunt trauma.

[brytta.leofa]

Because nobody ever died from blunt trauma.

Helmets should be fairly good at blocking sparring weapons?

I agree that impact weapons should probably be more dangerous in sparring than blunted sharpies.

[RogueGunslinger]

I think you missed the point shadow.

I'd like to see you realistically pull of killing someone in a sparring match without making it look like you intend to kill them.

It's pretty obvious when someone is swinging -really- hard at your head on more than one occasion. If I was a Sargeant, and just watched my newbie recruit get his head bashed in and killed by Amos the Mangler, who's known to dislike my recruit. I'd probably throw Amos into the pit.

Seriously, there are better, and more fun ways, to kill someone. For both parties involved.

Agree re: stamina drain, but I don't think it should be any more tiring than actually fighting.

Possibly we need something like a two-stage stamina system, where the first 20% comes and goes easily:
(1) You fight the gith.
(2) You kill the gith.
(3) You are out of breath, but
(4) Even in the desert, you're able to fairly quickly recover without resting (unless you've gotten yourself seriously torqued).

Coincidentally, that would come very close to providing the "travel really slow, travel really long" ability that several people have been asking for.  Ride slow and emote, and you can ride all day.

But how then do you "accidentally" off someone through a sparring accident with these changes?

How do you accidentally kill someone in your martial arts class?  Probably with backstab, sap, or a real weapon.

I like this idea.

[Yam]

If you want to kill someone in an accidental sparring match, you should probably bribe your sergeant beforehand.

[My 2 sids]

I don't think we need new code.   Maybe we could have a few docs -- explaining that no, your PC isn't really trying to harm (nor be harmed).    As for unevan partners, I've seen everything emoted out (as if in slow-motion to show form) and then use the teach skill.

[RogueGunslinger]

Don't get me started on the teach skill.

[Dalmeth]

Consistent injury is a reality of intensive combat training, especially with up close weapons.  If you strike a stick across my ribs, sooner or later, you're going to break them.  Then there's the innumerable combinations of weapon angle and bodily position wear you could strike a limb and cause serious damage.

Face it, sparring is a strenuous activity.

[RogueGunslinger]

No. Serious injury was, and currently is not commonplace in martial, or military sparring.

Know why? Because injured soldiers are pretty useless.

[Rhyden]

So you're saying that two people beating themselves with blunted bone or wood weapons are not be susceptible to injury?

I like sparring as it is. It was greatly improved when the disengage action was implemented and I'd like to see some sort of way that more experienced fighters could pull their blows on the less experienced, but overall, I see little problems with the way sparring works now.

[Synthesis]

This would help a lot:

Help Spar

The spar command is intended to be used when you are intending to train with the target of the command.  When used, your character will automatically disengage when the target is on the verge of being seriously injured.

Usage:

spar on (Turns sparring mode on)
spar off (Turns sparring mode off)

Note:  Using combat commands that inflict damage (e.g. bash, kick) after disengaging may continue to injure your partner.  Turning sparring mode on will not entirely prevent training accidents from occurring, so exercise caution when using this command.

========================

The way it would work:  it would basically take the place of constantly using the "assess" command manually.  When your sparring partner reaches "not well" (or worse), your character would automatically disengage.  When both partners have sparring mode on, the injured partner will continue to fight until the disengaged partner reaches "not well" (or worse), at which point he will disengage automatically as well.

Additionally, this command would automatically disengage you before landing blows following commands that would ordinarily re-initiate combat (e.g. disarm).

[RogueGunslinger]

So you're saying that two people beating themselves with blunted bone or wood weapons are not be susceptible to injury?

I like sparring as it is. It was greatly improved when the disengage action was implemented and I'd like to see some sort of way that more experienced fighters could pull their blows on the less experienced, but overall, I see little problems with the way sparring works now.

No. Let me be clear, since I guess I haven't been.

If you want to roleplay being injured during sparring, that's perfectly fine, and acceptable , and even realistic. But I don't want to make up some new excuse to go sleep every time I get knocked down too low in HP points to recover. I can't roleplay that I'm seriously injured every time this happens, because it happens way to frequently.

Currently, it is too easy for a more powerful character to completely mangle a newer character when they spar. Something like 1/3 or ever 1/2 of the time, I need to go see Bones, or I send someone else there.




The code, currently unrealistically injures you during spars, and the playerbase has been working around the code for longer than I've been here. They been playing like they are fatigued, when in reality, their characters are dying. So why not have the code cater to the players instead of the players cater to the code.

[mangler]

Yeh I agree somthing needs to be changed.. i find it kind of silly how badly you can maim someone with whats ment to be a blunt weapon, and in a controlled environment, I mean would people really put their full strength into hitting a person on the head in a friendly spar when they know it'll put them out of action of IG days.. or weeks.

[Dalmeth]

Yeh I agree somthing needs to be changed.. i find it kind of silly how badly you can maim someone with whats ment to be a blunt weapon, and in a controlled environment, I mean would people really put their full strength into hitting a person on the head in a friendly spar when they know it'll put them out of action of IG days.. or weeks.

How do you imagine you could train a person to kill another person without actually, ya know, trying to kill another person?  Blunted weapons are used to make it harder to kill the other.

[AreteX]

Coming from a newbie standpoint in terms of my first experiences 'sparring'.

I got my ASS handed to me.  Especially when I played a guild other than warrior.  I was simply NO match for anyone I fought.  We would melee for 3 rounds, and I'd be done.

This isn't fun.  It was boring always roleplaying "being beaten up".  Not that I dont mind roleplaying being beaten up, but I want to at least be able to type out a few emotes before my ass is handed to me, along with the person handing me my ass being able to type out a few emotes instead of sitting on the "Disengage" pre-typed so I dont get fragged.

If you're a newbie two-handed user, fighting against some quick attacking dual-wielder, you get to swing once, or twice before you're done and possibly having to go sleep it off(by roleplaying serious injury) because you "sparred" someone of greater skill who went all out and whooped your butt.  I dont think this is realistic.  For one, if Im more skilled, I know I won't be going all out.  Like an adult teaching a kid how to fight, you dont go knock the kid out, or hit him in the face.  Also, sparring most likely would not have anyone EVER aiming for the head.  Sure it could happen, but the times I've taken a big knock on the head is crazy.

Sparring is more like normal fighting, only the two people are sitting on 'disengage' waiting till someone is hurt and stopping.

It shouldn't be this way, it should allow for alot of emoting, and fun between both parties engaging in the sparring match.  Not just two people waiting to disengage eachother.

[Synthesis]

I don't get aggravated being a newbie and having my ass handed to me.

However, when you're like at, 11 days on a non-warrior guild and you're still getting smacked -hard- by warriors who are fresh out of chargen...that's when you kind of start you know...getting a little irritated. 

[Yam]

I've almost died to small, cat-sized lizards/insects numerous times.

Some parts of combat are wonky.

[a strange shadow]

There are other ways to train people than just whacking the shit out of them... even now.

The more experienced people, if interested in your progression, will let you attack first and disengage.

[RogueGunslinger]

That's still people working around the code, inspead of the code functioning properly.

If you make it so the newbie only attacks you, then newbies are only learning offensive abilities, and will still get fucking owned any time they fight someone with moderate skill.

I'm talking about sparring, with an unfamiliar blunted weapon in your off hand, and only taking two or three hits to get someone below 'So-and-so doesn't look well.' Granted that a case left to high-strength hits, but it happens more often than is realistic.

[Zoan]

Teaching a 'soldier' how to hit and not take hits is counter-productive, as anyone who knows fighting knows that tankiness wins fights (at least amongst warrior tropes). Why this is the case I won't go into, as it's too much information on the boards, but for a warrior, merely being able to hit someone doesn't make you skilled.

This is why I encourage beating the everloving shit out of other soldiers, but certainly letting it play out to be fun for them (emotes etc during the bout). I'm guilty of not doing any entertaining things within spars with certain people in my clan because I don't want to kill them, having typed 'disengage' into my zMUD command bar and waiting for the inevitable 'Blah reels from the blow.' message. Boring.

[Synthesis]

Teaching a 'soldier' how to hit and not take hits is counter-productive...

For both of the non-warrior combat-related guilds, this is most certainly -not- true.

[Yam]

Teaching a 'soldier' how to hit and not take hits is counter-productive...

For both of the non-warrior combat-related guilds, this is most certainly -not- true.

From the meat of his post, I believe he meant the opposite of that statement.

[Synthesis]

Teaching a 'soldier' how to hit and not take hits is counter-productive...

For both of the non-warrior combat-related guilds, this is most certainly -not- true.

From the meat of his post, I believe he meant the opposite of that statement.

My point is that "beating the everloving shit" out of a non-warrior is only mildly productive, at best, because of the bizarro-world of skill branching, and the fact that the defense nerf made base defense sans parry skill practically useless, unless you have god-like agility.

I believe his point was that offense doesn't matter in the long run--defense does (which I suppose is true).  However, his mistake is that, since the defense nerf, base defense has precious little to do with defensive capability.  The results you get from beating up warriors are from increases in parry and shield use--both of which warriors start with, and can get very good at.  Since non-warriors don't start with the parry skill, and seem to have fairly abysmal skill in shield use, the only thing you are really improving by "beating the everloving shit" out of them is base defense...which again, is practically useless unless you plan on convincing all of your opponents to fight unarmed.  If you continue only to beat the shit out of them constantly, they will -never- reach their full defensive potential.

[Forest Junkie]

Eh, on a side note, I understand why the defense nerf was enacted. I simply think the only ones whom benefit from it are mobs.

[Spoon]

I can see the frustration with being beaten to a pulp on a regular basis and having to act it out. However, I really do believe sparring should be as brutal as it is. It's not comparable to fencing, or any other kind of sport we have these days that involves sparring. I think to receive the level of training that PCs do (the ability to face god-knows what nine foot monster is lurking out in the desert) you would need to be doing some hardcore sparring. We're talking about Zalanthas here, and Zalanthan military organisations. I have no doubt that sparring should be something dangerous. People thumping each other with pieces of bone or wood, as if they were fighting for their life. True, they're not trying to kill each other, but that's what the mercy code is, which most of the time means not beating someone when they're down.

If sparring was a kind of game, where no one got hurt too much, I seriously doubt that soldier could face a gith in combat.

[mangler]

Yeh I agree somthing needs to be changed.. i find it kind of silly how badly you can maim someone with whats ment to be a blunt weapon, and in a controlled environment, I mean would people really put their full strength into hitting a person on the head in a friendly spar when they know it'll put them out of action of IG days.. or weeks.

How do you imagine you could train a person to kill another person without actually, ya know, trying to kill another person?  Blunted weapons are used to make it harder to kill the other.

Im not saying you wouldnt hit them on the head or neck, just I dont think you wound do it with as large force as possible..  I imagine it would be more like if you had the ability to hit someone in the neck, you've practically won the spar, so you wouldn't just try and behead them for the fun of it.

[Barzalene]

I tend to agree with the original poster here. I think that if sparring were such a dangerous proposition in real life we'd have had fewer wars. Most people would have stayed home and invested in stronger locks. They'd have moved to islands. Distance weapons would have been more popular.
If you're sparring, mercy on, with a sparring weapon there should be a  damage cap. And the better you are at fighting, the less likely you are to hurt someone by accident.

The thing is, how exactly do you code that? I think a multitude of sins can be covered by not expecting people to rp that they're about to keel over every time they have a bad day at training.  A simple "ow," should suffice unless someone is deliberately trying to hurt them in the sparring ring.

[Barzalene]

Completely unrelated I have an issue with leader types at sparring lessons. And this is very prevalent, and not aimed specifically at anyone I've been playing with recently, but rather at everyone I've been playing with all along.

You have some buff leader type. You have a bunch of scrawny mewling trainees who have trouble buckling their own helmets on. Sparring time comes. Leader spars weakling A, gets no damage. So he spars weakling B. Then weakling C. Then weakling's A, B, and C. And then A, B and C all at once. Then sparring is over. The next day they do the same thing.

Why doesn't it occurr to these people to let A, B and C fight each other once in a while? He could call out instructions and encouragements.

Obviously, the second scenario occurs, but with far less frequency than the first. You're already buff, dudes. It's nice that you're buff. We get you'd like to be buffer, But it would be more fun for the other three people to give them more than a one in three chance to get to spar in a given period. To have the chance to spar in a match they might win, or which won't be over in two hits.

[Qzzrbl]

I wouldn't say make sparring take away -stamina- points.... Because then you'd have to make real fighting take away stamina points too. To balance it out.

And we all know that in real life, that only kicking or trying to knock a sword out of someone's hand are pretty much the only things that will tire you out, amirite?!

I think that sparring weapons should do more stun damage than anything, really.

HP shouldn't account for things that just hurt. My character cutting his finger while cutting a steak. Should this take HP damage? I don't really think so. Someone hits my character in the head with a padded stick. Should this take HP damage? I'd say it should take away 2-3 HP for every other hit to the head, maybe. I've always imagined killing someone with a padded sparring weapon would take hours, maybe even days of just bashing away at someone. Though knocking someone out with enough hard hits to the head isn't a stretch of the imagination.

[jhunter]

I personally liked things better before all the tweaking was done to combat-related things. I'm getting to like our combat system less and less as the changes happen to it. It's becoming more irritating than enjoyable as time goes on.

[Qzzrbl]

I personally liked things better before all the tweaking was done to combat-related things. I'm getting to like our combat system less and less as the changes happen to it. It's becoming more irritating than enjoyable as time goes on.

Meh, wish I could've seen what it was like before.

I think the only tweak I was around for was the 2-hander and encumbrance changes.

[My 2 sids]

Someone mentioned taking away stun instead of HP.  I think that's great.

Could the rooms themselves be coded to over-ride the normal hit points to reflect Stun rather than HP?

[Qzzrbl]

Mm, I think it would be a change better left for the sparring weapons themselves.

Not everyone has a sparring hall at their disposal y'know. 

[RogueGunslinger]

I think stun is a good idea as well, but how many points would be accurate? Would players using blunt weapons always win a sparring match?

[Qzzrbl]

I think stun is a good idea as well, but how many points would be accurate? Would players using blunt weapons always win a sparring match?

I would say make most/all of the sparring weapons do about the same amount of damage.... Because essentially, they -are- blunt weapons, but just shaped like swords and other stuff.

And of course, the amount of stun taken would depend on where the blow lands. Though of course sparring weapons shouldn't do more stun damage than live weapons.

[mangler]

Would this end up favouring clubs in the sparring ring? As to me a training club just seems like a lighter version or a normal club, but still bulkier than a training sword/dagger, so would having them all do stun instead of HP allow clubs to be more dominant? Since they do more Stun at the moment, or would you say that clubs should be toned down to to do the same amount of stun as the other weapons?

[Tisiphone]

If by "more favoured" you mean, "most damaging," then quite possibly yes. However, I believe the intention of sparring is precisely NOT to mangle your opponent, GDB handle to the contrary.


Don't take that as being snippy, I think the pun's cute, that's all.

[Qzzrbl]

Would this end up favouring clubs in the sparring ring? As to me a training club just seems like a lighter version or a normal club, but still bulkier than a training sword/dagger, so would having them all do stun instead of HP allow clubs to be more dominant? Since they do more Stun at the moment, or would you say that clubs should be toned down to to do the same amount of stun as the other weapons?

In all technicality, a blunted wooden sword would do more damage, as all of the force is on a more concentrated edge.

But again, I say that the sparring weapons could be re-worked so that they're reasonably blunted/padded to the point to where they'd all do about the same amount of damage.

[fourTwenty]

It shouldn't matter if clubs do slightly more damage than other weapons when sparring.
Sparring is practice, it's not about who wins. It's about training yourself in the fighting style you wish to use.

Derail/ I hate people who turn sparring into a competition IRL (It bleeds IG a little to). /d

[Kyviantre]

From experience of LARP weapons, sparring seems to be similar.  You don't go all out, you pull your blows (even if its a little), since while you want to teach rookie-recruit-number1 to fight, you want to teach them stances, how to move, other things in addition to just how to hack at someone.  Fighting is all about how to fight, if you want to learn to batter someone, become a butcher!

Also, blunted weapons (in my limited opinion) don't bleed you, they bruise you like crazy, they stun you if you get your head clobbered, they make your limbs go numb, but they aren't sharp, they don't cut into your flesh easily, so you don't start bleeding from every orrifice at a moments notice.

Hence I'm for extra stun and less HP damage, purely because smacking someone with the flat of a sword will daze them, not make them bleed all over your nice new boots.

[X-D]

I would quote a bunch of things here but I won't.

The OP and most others are wrong. Equating LARP sparring or even SCA sparring to arm sparring is silly. Fact of the matter is. In current RL sparring, it is a GAME, a Sport or acting. You are not trying to train to kill somebody you are training to look good PRETENDING to kill somebody. And never trying to pick up any skills to kill somebody in a real sword fight tomorrow. Fact of the matter is, if you "spar" by pulling your blows then that is exactly what you are training to do...pull your blows, be less then lethal.

In "REAL" sparring with weapons in which you are trying to learn to actually defend yourself and kill. Accidents of crippling or even deadly nature are not all that rare. There is a reason why boxing is one of the deadliest sports IRL, even with rules and padded gloves, the opponents really are trying to kill each other.

Now take that, add weapons and make it training to defend yourself on the street or battle ground...meh. If anything I think Arm sparring should be made more deadly to add realism, it is amazing how rare arm sparring deaths really are.

[Yam]

X-D is right. Full on combat sparring really shouldn't be safe.

Plenty of people died in medieval tournaments. Zalanthas =! soccer.

[Barzalene]

People are far more likely to be killed in the ring in a fight, than in a sparring match.

[Tisiphone]

X-D is right. Full on combat sparring really shouldn't be safe.

Plenty of people died in medieval tournaments. Zalanthas =! soccer.

[brytta.leofa]

Wouldn't a tournament be more analogous to the Luir's pit fights than to sparring?

[Yam]

Not necessarily. I imagine Byn sparring to be pretty damn competitive.

Only the best runners get to go on contracts to make money. So they would probably want to constantly beat down the other runners and make sure they they get the lion's share of the contracts. Same goes for troopers. This is probably not true for other sparring clans.


In general though, boxers are not sparring to fight life-or-death battles. Bynners, Kuracis, Kadians, Salarris, et al are. Training might be a fair bit more rigorous in that case. All members of a combat troupe depend on one another for support. If someone is lagging behind, they get the shit beat out of them until they learn to fight, leave, or die.

This isn't to say that most members should try to purposefully incapacitate and injure their sparring partners (except in the case of the Byn), but that they should not pull punches to the point of taking the danger and pain out of training.

On the other hand it isn't very fun to constantly get beaten half to death and not improve. I'm pretty sure that the staff intend to implement skill percentage flags in 2.arm. I may be wrong though. If I'm not, then this would pretty much eliminate any of the aforementioned problems with sparring.