Changes in the Barrier Skill

[NoteworthyFellow]

My suggestion:

I'm gathering that, if there is a stun drain attached to it, that means it requires conscious will and concentration to keep it active.  This makes sense, and it also makes sense that someone who isn't as good at either combat or whatever act requires that concentration would have to lose said concentration when in the act of something as frantic as combat.

But, perhaps at very high levels of both barrier and contact skill, the user has a chance to maintain concentration during combat?  Such things would have to be pretty much second nature to the user by that time, but I don't think it's too far-fetched that such frequently used skills could become that ingrained.  And it wouldn't necessarily be a guarantee that barrier or contact will remain active; perhaps there would be a roll at the start of combat against the user's barrier or contact skill to see if it's maintained, then each successful hit landed on the user of barrier or contact would have a chance to interrupt it, a separate roll that depends on both the barrier or contact skill and the severity of the hit.

[a strange shadow]

Nyr, et al,

I think we may be getting our terminology confused.

There is a difference between stun cost, max stun drain, and consistant stun drain. I think there should be max mana or mana drain costs for specific spells as well as initial mana costs, just as there are psionic max drains, psionic drains, and initial psionic drains. I won't go into further detail than that, the applications should be obvious to staff in the know.

[NoteworthyFellow]

Nyr, et al,

I think we may be getting our terminology confused.

There is a difference between stun cost, max stun drain, and consistant stun drain. I think there should be max mana or mana drain costs for specific spells as well as initial mana costs, just as there are psionic max drains, psionic drains, and initial psionic drains. I won't go into further detail than that, the applications should be obvious to staff in the know.

I disagree with this.  Spells with durations (defensive spells, "buffs" or "debuffs," etc.) are different from maintained psionic abilities like barrier.  Now, if you're willing to change a few of these to "maintained" spells that won't go away until the caster dismisses them, then I'm willing to listen, but otherwise I see this only as unnecessarily lowering a mage's maximum mana (or imposing a constant mana drain for spells that are necessary for survival in a combat situation in ways that barrier is not).

[a strange shadow]

Now, if you're willing to change a few of these to "maintained" spells that won't go away until the caster dismisses them, then I'm willing to listen

That's exactly what I mean. I forgot to clarify that, apologies.

[NoteworthyFellow]

Now, if you're willing to change a few of these to "maintained" spells that won't go away until the caster dismisses them, then I'm willing to listen

That's exactly what I mean. I forgot to clarify that, apologies.

I can get behind an idea like this, but then I start to wonder about the magick theory of Zalanthas and whether it makes sense with the way spells and mana work.  I can't really say much more without crossing into IC-land, though.  Maybe I can say that I don't think mana works the same way stun does, but that's about all.  Again, I'm not sure, though, and a staff member could definitely answer better than I ever could.

[Lizzie]

If a hit to you affects your stun, then sure it'd make sense for barrier to be pulled down. So in combat, if you're fighting something or someone, and they hit you, but their hits are -not- causing stun damage, then you should be able to maintain your barrier. If their hits -are- causing stun damage, then sure I can see how it makes excellent sense for you to lose control of your barrier.

Other things that could affect it is your own level of skill with the barrier skill - if you're good enough with the Way that you've already branched "expel" (which is a skill that everyone can get eventually and was announced on the GDB and is in the help files so its existence isn't undocumented or secret or taboo to mention), then you are probably good enough with barrier that it'll take a pretty unpleasant smack to break the barrier.

Perhaps -any- direct hit to the head, causing any damage at all whether HPs or stun, would break the barrier.

Perhaps -only- direct hits to the head would break barrier, and a bad hit to the leg wouldn't. Perhaps only direct hits to the head, -plus- any hit that causes you to reel, would break it.

There are lots of possible alternatives to an automatic "the gimpka rat hits you and misses" barrier break in combat.

[NoteworthyFellow]

If a hit to you affects your stun, then sure it'd make sense for barrier to be pulled down. So in combat, if you're fighting something or someone, and they hit you, but their hits are -not- causing stun damage, then you should be able to maintain your barrier. If their hits -are- causing stun damage, then sure I can see how it makes excellent sense for you to lose control of your barrier.

Other things that could affect it is your own level of skill with the barrier skill - if you're good enough with the Way that you've already branched "expel" (which is a skill that everyone can get eventually and was announced on the GDB and is in the help files so its existence isn't undocumented or secret or taboo to mention), then you are probably good enough with barrier that it'll take a pretty unpleasant smack to break the barrier.

Perhaps -any- direct hit to the head, causing any damage at all whether HPs or stun, would break the barrier.

Perhaps -only- direct hits to the head would break barrier, and a bad hit to the leg wouldn't. Perhaps only direct hits to the head, -plus- any hit that causes you to reel, would break it.

There are lots of possible alternatives to an automatic "the gimpka rat hits you and misses" barrier break in combat.

Like this:

My suggestion:

I'm gathering that, if there is a stun drain attached to it, that means it requires conscious will and concentration to keep it active.  This makes sense, and it also makes sense that someone who isn't as good at either combat or whatever act requires that concentration would have to lose said concentration when in the act of something as frantic as combat.

But, perhaps at very high levels of both barrier and contact skill, the user has a chance to maintain concentration during combat?  Such things would have to be pretty much second nature to the user by that time, but I don't think it's too far-fetched that such frequently used skills could become that ingrained.  And it wouldn't necessarily be a guarantee that barrier or contact will remain active; perhaps there would be a roll at the start of combat against the user's barrier or contact skill to see if it's maintained, then each successful hit landed on the user of barrier or contact would have a chance to interrupt it, a separate roll that depends on both the barrier or contact skill and the severity of the hit.

[Nusku]

Nyr, et al,

I think we may be getting our terminology confused.

There is a difference between stun cost, max stun drain, and consistant stun drain. I think there should be max mana or mana drain costs for specific spells as well as initial mana costs, just as there are psionic max drains, psionic drains, and initial psionic drains. I won't go into further detail than that, the applications should be obvious to staff in the know.

The thought has crossed the collective staff consciousness before. Some applications of that principle are already being undertaken; they're not ready for deployment yet, but you might see a few things shape up along these lines. It might end up being a proof of concept for future changes along those lines, it might end up being the Worst Idea Evar.

Personally, I like the idea of channeled spells. There are a few other really neat spell concepts that we don't use that I think it would be fun to include, but we're working with pretty archaic code in a lot of cases. DIKU has some limitations, which means there are some things that we're probably not going to see effectively implemented until Arm 2.0. Also, while Arm 1 provides us with a nice testbed for some proof of concept things, all the effort we put into Arm 1 is effort we're not putting into Arm 2.0.

Is it worth it to keep making changes to the current game? I think so, but in many cases we're running up against the design vs. evolution barrier. So many parts of the game have simply evolved past their initial design constraints that the only way to corral everything is to do a complete overhaul and come up with a new design that incorporates the features that you want. Coming up with that level of redesign is impractical for Arm 1, so the best we can do is to keep tweaking things to provide us with both the level of gameplay we want and the appropriate insights into how things should be designed in the next game.

Since the original topic of discussion is barrier, I'll point out that it's a great example of something that was allowed to run far, far beyond its initial design constraints. It has been used as a band-aid to slap on top of all kinds of things that it really never should have. It became the cure to far too many ills, and now it has evolved into the problem instead of the solution. Can we fix it? We're so far beyond that point; a real fix would probably involve more work than we're willing to put into it. Can we tweak a few things here and there and try to restore some semblance of design? Yes, we can. We are. And for better or worse, that's going to have to suffice.

[Reiloth]

I tend to agree with the Staff on this one.

While I agree with what Fathi and X-D have said about raiders / sdesc masking, I think it is a little silly to be able to concentrate on maintaining a psychic barrier, while trying to bash someone's head in, or protect yourself from getting killed.

When I have been in fights, it is on. Adrenaline central, thoughts don't really exist, it turns into primal instinct. While I do not have the ability to either contact other sentient beings conscious thoughts, or throw up a wall against other people's probings, I can -imagine- that such a thing would be incredibly difficult to do during combat, regardless of situation.

While I agree there might need to be a grey area in the second game, (Such as the example of swatting at a small child while being a badass captain of the guard), is it really worth that tweak in code?

I would rather focus on improving mundanes ability to cope with non-mundanes extremely different power scale. At this point, I feel that the 'floor' (Being the lowest point of coded power) that non-mundanes walk upon is the heads of every single mundane character. Are there exceptions? Absolutely. A 100 day+ assassin can one shot a 100 day Krathi, no questions asked. A 100 day warrior -- Well. That might be a different story, it might not. If its a Whiran? Good luck, to either assassins or warriors. But as Fathi touched on, it is more than just coded ability. Its plots, its staff protection and coddling, its twinking, its code reliance instead of RP ability.

I believe most of these balance issues will be solved in 2.0, especially with multi-classing and being able to better 'portray' a warrior of your choice.

As a final note, I will say that Magick, from what I have seen, is returning to the old ways in Tuluk at least. It seems to be scary, it seems to be rare. If it isn't, its peoples are doing a good job hiding it and being subtle.

[Qzzrbl]

I can see it already....

Code Select Expand


Barrer
You've set up a barrier, yo.

tell merchant (viciously pointing ~sword at !merchant) Stand and deliver! One look at me and ya's dead! Eyes to th' sand!
Viciously pointing your sword at the scared little merchant, the cloaked raider exclaims, "Stand and deliver! One look at me an' ya's dead, eyes to th' sand!"

The scared little merchant attacks you.
You feel your mental barrier fading away
The scared little merchant flees

thinking oocly: "Shit, shit, shit, shit.

Barrier
You fail to set up a barrier.

Barrier
You fail to set up a barrier.

You feel a foreign presence contact your mind.

You feel a foreign presence withdraw from your mind

I'm just saying, the Barrier is pretty much the raider/thieve's only means of snuffing out sdesc sniffing.

Now it can be easily bypassed.

And now people will be less inclined to make a raider and/or thief.

And now there's less stealing going on, meaning less conflict.

Plus, not to mention (censored) can now totally attack, flee, and (censored) to your (censored) and (censored) that (censored) right off your little (censored) and into the (censored) leaving you to (censored) then boom.

Mantis head.

[Nyr]

Submit a player complaint if you feel as though someone is abusing something allowed by the code.

Sdesc sniffing is a controversial issue.  I think it should be brought up in its own thread, for what it's worth; I have heard interesting arguments for either side of the matter. 

[Dalmeth]

Seriously, you should be able to watch your opponent during combat.  It's a bug that you can't do it right now, isn't it?

It's mildly crazy that I have to alias the kill and watch command together whenever I'm tracking someone down.

[X-D]

Why do some of you think it is odd that somebody can keep a barrier up through combat?

I mean, I had a rather recent combat master PC who could easily take on stuff that was pretty much in the realm of sillyness without breaking a sweat. And Who lived with barrier up for his entire life. all 70+ days and a rl year. These things should have been EASY for him to do and his barrier and combat second nature...even first, like breathing. Yet, even with a barrier that should have been like 5 inches of steel armor plating, 5 day PCs routinely broke it. And now a gimpka rat missing him will break it to? No, that is sillyness.

Currently the code does not take such things as total experiance into account, As with almost anything else in Arm(code) It is either on, or off, yes or no, nothing in between. Nothing to say Hey, maybe because he is a master in this and this and this, he just might be able to , some % of the time be able to do two things at once. This is one thing to be said for level systems. Least then, even in a yes/no environment You can add such things in, putting in code to say, Alright, this guy has max barrier, max parry, max weapon skills and is level 121, verses a level 6 rat, He can keep his barrier up because at that high level difference he does not nood to even think about defending himself and killing the rat, it is something he could/would litterally do in his sleep.

And for the record, even though I don't talk about it often, I still hate reel code, even if it does normaly (99% of the time) Work to my PCs advantage and I think that stam loss for combat skills only helps NPCs, specificly ones controlled by staff since NPCs do not need to rest to regen stam, long as they are not in combat they regen at an alarming rate. Nothing worse then having a PC with over 180 usable stam who is riding, get chased 20 rooms by a mantis who is running the entire time then have that mantis and all his buddies use kick bash disarm 20 times each, then still be able to flee, run away, throw, run some more, throw, come back, while running, fight some more, to the point that just the disarm reversals from your PC has drained his stam to 20. Which means that the NPCs used up well over 400 stam.

[Nusku]

And Who lived with barrier up for his entire life. all 70+ days and a rl year. These things should have been EASY for him to do ...

You, sir, are gravely mistaken. Your example is a perfect illustration of something that no one should be able to do, and yet thanks to mutated code is now doing something it was never, ever intended for.

Let me be perfectly clear:

1. Walking around with a barrier up 100% of the time is not the purpose for which the skill was designed.
2. Yes, the code allows you to do it now, with virtually no penalty.
3. This is why we are making changes.

[a strange shadow]

A 100 day+ assassin can one shot a 100 day Krathi, no questions asked.

And a 40-day Krathi can one-shot a 100-day assassin that rolls poorly on his backstab (because unless he's been murdering NPCs on carefully crafted IC excuses, his backstab still sucks balls, while that Krathi has been casting at nil), no questions asked.

The rest of your post I can generally agree with.

[Tisiphone]

Two. Cents.

Arguments for and against barrier based on realism are castles in the air. According to most people, we don't have psionics, and according to most people who say we do, they don't work as they do in Arm.

Stick to playability; it has some weight.

[Dalmeth]

Two. Cents.

Arguments for and against barrier based on realism are castles in the air. According to most people, we don't have psionics, and according to most people who say we do, they don't work as they do in Arm.

Stick to playability; it has some weight.

Primary reason barrier shouldn't break on combat : no one is ever 100% with it.  It's one thing to take a moment to calm yourself after combat, but a full minute on the scale we operate?  It doesn't make so much sense.

[X-D]

What was it intended for then?

It was either intended to be useful or not...Period.

Barrier, before this change was, as I have stated before, only marginally useful.

It is too weak, too easily broken, so is not real useful for defensive use against coded things some classes can do. And is pointless to use to hide in any way, including your sdesc or that you are alive or IG.

This change moves it into the "why bother" List of skills to train/use. Only to be used when in a closed room with another person when you are trying to trade secrets in hopes that maybe (And I'm not saying they can or not) but maybe a psi will not be able to snoop what is going on without you knowing. And giving even more reason when meeting certain classes to simply attack without warning/emote/rp.

AND, you are yourself wrong on one thing. No matter the intention, no matter that people argue it is not realistic to begin with so stick to talking about playability. If you or anybody does something enough, they will get to the point of being able to do it all the time without thinking. You might find it nearly impossible to balance a tennisball on each shoulder and walk around. But if you did it long enough and worked on it long enough you could not only walk around but do most the things you do every day to survive keeping them balls in place without even thinking about doing it.

And let us give a moment to talk about playability. It is bad enough that this hurts playability in many ways, Sure, maybe 95% of players will never end up dealing with it. But some/many will. And it sucks when things like this are done BEFORE anything else is changed to keep playability. Backwards if you ask me. The PC types who could/can take advantage of somebody not having barrier up already had a massive advantage, enough so that a maxed barrier was like having a twig to fend off a grizzly, but now even the twig has been takin away.

And sure, I am being vocal and maybe annoying, but I play mostly combat heavy PCs. And at least before I had that twig to hold up against being one shotted. Twig gone, Now what? Might as well take my (insert bunch of time played here) Naked PC into mek territory at night. Same thing, Might not run into that mek this time, but eventually you will and when you do you have no chance in hell.

[cyberpatrol_735]

Don't like it.

[Nyr]

What was it intended for then?

It was either intended to be useful or not...Period.

Barrier, before this change was, as I have stated before, only marginally useful.

It is too weak, too easily broken, so is not real useful for defensive use against coded things some classes can do. And is pointless to use to hide in any way, including your sdesc or that you are alive or IG.

This change moves it into the "why bother" List of skills to train/use. Only to be used when in a closed room with another person when you are trying to trade secrets in hopes that maybe (And I'm not saying they can or not) but maybe a psi will not be able to snoop what is going on without you knowing. And giving even more reason when meeting certain classes to simply attack without warning/emote/rp.

AND, you are yourself wrong on one thing. No matter the intention, no matter that people argue it is not realistic to begin with so stick to talking about playability. If you or anybody does something enough, they will get to the point of being able to do it all the time without thinking. You might find it nearly impossible to balance a tennisball on each shoulder and walk around. But if you did it long enough and worked on it long enough you could not only walk around but do most the things you do every day to survive keeping them balls in place without even thinking about doing it.

And let us give a moment to talk about playability. It is bad enough that this hurts playability in many ways, Sure, maybe 95% of players will never end up dealing with it. But some/many will. And it sucks when things like this are done BEFORE anything else is changed to keep playability. Backwards if you ask me. The PC types who could/can take advantage of somebody not having barrier up already had a massive advantage, enough so that a maxed barrier was like having a twig to fend off a grizzly, but now even the twig has been takin away.

And sure, I am being vocal and maybe annoying, but I play mostly combat heavy PCs. And at least before I had that twig to hold up against being one shotted. Twig gone, Now what? Might as well take my (insert bunch of time played here) Naked PC into mek territory at night. Same thing, Might not run into that mek this time, but eventually you will and when you do you have no chance in hell.

...It was designed this way initially (to break on combat), but was not functioning this way.  In fact, we've been discussing this very skill on the IDB (and still are), and weren't discussing this particular change to that skill at all.  This discussion that we had prompted a look at the code surrounding the skill.  The original coder that implemented it noticed that it was not functioning as intended, and made a change to reflect the way it was intended. 
Back to that discussion I mentioned, though. There will likely be more changes to come to reflect that discussion, because we (like those of you that have posted here) are very much aware of things in the game that can become unbalanced or exploited.  In fact, there were several other things that were discussed that have simply been accepted as "fact" (and rather detrimental to playability) that could possibly be changed as a result (unrelated to barrier).

It's not out of the question that things still won't be altered to take into account suggestions here, because suggestions have been the root of some changes made in the past.  I've seen some staff-side discussion on the game port even today about it.  As best I can tell, the bug-fix has been live since the last maintenance (which was either early yesterday or Monday, I forget).  I understand that people are concerned about feature creeping adversely affecting balance and gameplay between mundane characters and their non-mundane counterparts, and I have duly noted it in the thread that the staff is using and has previously been using to discuss this--but it has only been two days.

[Krath]

I dunno, For the most part I do -not- like this idea at all. Now it makes it virtually IMPOSSIBLE
to raid anyone. First, MDESC hiding Mask were taken away. Now Barrier is too? Come on, it just
seems like this was made so people can FIND raiders, thieves, etc more easily. All you need to do now is
Attack raider, flee, contact sandcloth figure. I do not like this -at all-. But, This is just my stance.

[Nusku]

All you need to do now is
Attack raider, flee, contact sandcloth figure.

Attacking an armed raider (incurring a rather nice delay), fleeing (risking failure), and then using contact (incurring more delay) in the hopes that you get through before said raider gets a barrier back up or worse, finds you again, seems like a good idea? Being the one to attack first is a good way to establish yourself as the victim in a scenario in the eyes of anyone who happens to witness the event? This is your clever plan for figuring out someone's sdesc?

And let's remind ourselves, barrier isn't the issue here, this so-called "sdesc sniffing" is your concern. Barrier is not a good fix or deterrent for that. Using it as a deterrent to a problem it wasn't meant to fix was about as effective as a band-aid on a disembowelment. So if the inability to keep your identity under wraps is the real problem, then as Nyr has said before, let's talk about the real problem, not try to shore up a poorly conceived workaround.

[Delstro]

It would be more like this:
Raider attacks you and tries to use bash (Has a hefty delay following a hefty delay in an attempt to knock you from your mount).  He fails the bash.
You flee (Minor Delay).
North (Minor delay)
contact raider (Minor Delay)
Raider follows north (Minor Delay) -OR- tries barrier (Medium delay) -OR- lowers their hood (No delay, but then the attackee looks south and sees the PC.)
The raider has someone in their head that suddenly disconnects.


Game over for Raider.

[FantasyWriter]

Here or some tips that will help you get around the raiding problem until staff--if they ever do--make a definitive decision rather short desc fishing is OOC or not.

http://www.zalanthas.org/gdb/index.php/topic,32858.msg392262.html#new

[jhunter]

I don't think it should be an all or nothing thing.
I think that a skilled combatant with a decent barrier skill should be able to keep a barrier up while engaged. The point is that it would simply take less effort for them. That, and a hard hit to the head or a "reel" effect should knock down a barrier.

So again, IMO it should be changed so that it's not impossible for someone with a decent barrier skill and decent combat skill to keep barrier up while fighting. It should also be put in place that a hard hit to the head or being "reeled" should knock down your barrier no matter how good you are at it.

I severely dislike the change to it being impossible because it's not out of the realm of believability that skilled people could do this.

There have been some good code changes over the last few years. There have also been some pretty shitty ones too that I believe added nothing to the game and only succeeded in uping the dificulty of doing certain things that were unreasonably difficult in the first place.