Pending Change to Charge

[Lizzie]

To "Me":

It is the fault of both the code, and the player. If the code isn't intended to be used a certain way, then it shouldn't be *efficient* at being used in that way. Yes, people will always find ways around the code.

When "finding ways around the code" turns into "common practice" then there is something wrong with the code.

You cannot, and should not, expect the staff to babysit every single PC who has the charge skill, JUST in case they might use it irresponsibly. It is a *common* tactic. It is common, because the code has been "worked around" for a very long time, to the point where it was just assumed the code was intended to do that. This - is a fault of the code. The code was built during the time when hack-n-slash was more attractive than RPI. H&S is still more attractive than RPI, but the Armageddon community and code has evolved from that mentality. The code is -still- evolving. The charge code is part of that continual evolution.

[NoteworthyFellow]

I'm going to reiterate my suggestion:

Cooldowns.

Okay, I know, it smacks of World of Warcraft, but it's a fantastic way to prevent spamming. If you can make it so you have to wait x number of seconds between disarms or charges, you won't see spamming anymore, because it'll be codedly impossible. If you need a hand-wave to make it "realistic," pretend that it takes your character that long to find another opening to disarm someone, or something along those lines. You can still do other skills while one of your skills is on cooldown, of course--while you're waiting to be able to disarm again (and I'm not saying we need appreciably long cooldowns, by the way, just long enough to prevent spamming), you can kick, or bash, or whatever. Each skill has its own cooldown, the length of which is dependent on the skill and perhaps on the skill level, too.

Yes. It reeks of MMORPG and some people won't like that. But it's a sure-fire way to prevent skill-spamming and related abusive behavior in combat situations, and isn't that difficult to rationalize realistically from the player's perspective. Yes, I know, in real life you could attempt to disarm someone over and over again, and isn't Armageddon big on realism? And yes, it is, but these sorts of topics have come up often enough that limitations that may just barely cross over into the unrealistic sound pretty reasonable to me. Wouldn't you prefer to have to wait a few seconds between disarms or charges than to have situations where a character is spam-charged to death? I know I would.

[Lizzie]

I didn't know that the game lacked roundtimes (cooldowns, old-style).

I thought it was built into the code, no? I know it's built into kick. The combat continues, but you can't use that command again for a couple of seconds.

The more agile you are, the quicker you can do it a second time. With charge, the agility would depend on the mount rather than the person typing the command. So a clunky slow-as-marilla-sap sunlon would sit back and toke a tube of tho before he gets around to charging again. But an erdlu would be all over it. The erdlu wouldn't do as much damage as a sunlon, but that big ugly bird hopping you to death's gonna hurt, if he's so fast you can't get up between hops.

[NoteworthyFellow]

I didn't know that the game lacked roundtimes (cooldowns, old-style).

I thought it was built into the code, no? I know it's built into kick. The combat continues, but you can't use that command again for a couple of seconds.

The more agile you are, the quicker you can do it a second time. With charge, the agility would depend on the mount rather than the person typing the command. So a clunky slow-as-marilla-sap sunlon would sit back and toke a tube of tho before he gets around to charging again. But an erdlu would be all over it. The erdlu wouldn't do as much damage as a sunlon, but that big ugly bird hopping you to death's gonna hurt, if he's so fast you can't get up between hops.

If they're built in, maybe they should be longer, then. I haven't noticed them, but then again, I've never tried to spam-kick someone. But then again, I've never had a character with a high enough kick skill for that to matter.

[Nyr]

 

It's always good to see staff putting effort into trying to stem code abuse and whatnots. Here's my two sids however:

At the end of the day, why nerf a certain skill to prevent code abuse? As long as there are codes, there will always be players who will be abusing them. No matter what sort of implementation or restrictions you put out on a certain coded skill, there will always be players or as we like to call "twinkers" trying to find loop holes and ways to go around it. My thought is this, simply just dish out harsher punishments when code abuse or any other un-Arm-like-ethical behavior is involved on players.

We're not particularly in this line of volunteer work to police "bad" players.  If the code allows something to happen that we decide should not occur, we'd generally rather change the code to prevent it.

I'm going to reiterate my suggestion:

Cooldowns.

Okay, I know, it smacks of World of Warcraft, but it's a fantastic way to prevent spamming.

We call them "delays" on Arm.  Help on most skills shows a delay either before or after the use of a skill, depending on its type.

[mattrious]

People in the MMO community would call what is being done "carebear".  I don't dislike the change to charge so much as I feel it makes the skill practically useless now.  What happened if 15% of the time when you failed a backstab you fell on your face?  It seems a little stupid that a master at riding is going to fall off during a pre-planned charge that only does a few hp of damage.  Furthermore, I don't like how you can be bashed while mounted and even knocked into the next room (at least by NPC's).  Totally lame.  The charge skill could use some overhaul.

If you want to use that type of logic the skill in its present form would also be considered an 'I win' button. Charge made it impossible for anyone to get out of lag and actually flee, let alone anything else. All of you rangers out there think that this is some great injustice but where is the realisim with this skill? Sure, if you're on a 'warhorse' you might be able to trample me, but even then I've got a decent chance of moving one direction or another and a chance to draw a weapon or two. You're telling me that you could repeatedly ride someone down and give them no chance in fleeing? Bull. This is a decent fix to something that was being abused and I for one am glad to see it go live.

[brytta.leofa]

I don't know why folks are crying "spam" and "abuse."  That's how charge works.  The staff decided to change it.  It's probably a good change.

The courtly, bejeweled ranger says, reining in a massive, silver-shelled inix, in sirihish,
  "Stand up, sirrah, and pick up thy sword.  This is no proper duel!"

IMHO, simply just take away certain guild options  - let say Ranger Amos spam charges a hapless PC with no emotes, no rp scenes involved, no other forms of interactions. Then simply just take ranger guild away from player A, throw in a few neg notes along the way.

I'm not sure what kind of emoting and "rp scenes" you think you should expect in wilderness combat with real weapons.  Until combat is slowed way down, or the staff start handing out resurrections for "being killed without enough emoting," that's where it sets.

Though it's enriching to emote such things when you can do so without substantial risk.

This is decent fix to something that was being abused and I for one am glad to see it go live.

This is a decent fix to something that, apparently, had a design flaw.  (Though we could argue the same thing about reel; it's just that, since there's no reel command, we can't complain that someone who benefits from the design is a spamming spammy twink.)

[NoteworthyFellow]

I'm going to reiterate my suggestion:

Cooldowns.

Okay, I know, it smacks of World of Warcraft, but it's a fantastic way to prevent spamming.

We call them "delays" on Arm.  Help on most skills shows a delay either before or after the use of a skill, depending on its type.

Hm. Y'know, I knew that, but I didn't really make much of a connection. Either way, they don't seem to do much to stop spamming--so either they should be longer, or my suggestion was profoundly off the mark.

I'm not sure what kind of emoting and "rp scenes" you think you should expect in wilderness combat with real weapons.  Until combat is slowed way down, or the staff start handing out resurrections for "being killed without enough emoting," that's where it sets.

Though it's enriching to emote such things when you can do so without substantial risk.

I like the idea of slowing combat down somewhat. I'm of the belief that it should be about fewer hits with bigger damage per hit. More time to emote, for one thing.

[SMuz]

I wouldn't mind the delays to charge being much longer, like 30 seconds or so.

Or if this bug fix is going through, it would be nice if we could charge from the next room. Or even two rooms away (with a penalty, of course).

[Twilight]

Delay here is what is generally called a wait state.

Which is different than a cooldown.

A cooldown of 30 seconds wouldn't be bad (can't use the skill, can use other commands)

A delay/wait state of 30 seconds would be insane (can't use any skill, and a number of commands)

[Agent_137]

Delay here is what is generally called a wait state.

Which is different than a cooldown.

A cooldown of 30 seconds wouldn't be bad (can't use the skill, can use other commands)

A delay/wait state of 30 seconds would be insane (can't use any skill, and a number of commands)

good post, twilight. exactly what I was going to say.

cooldowns would be awesome and far better for playability than having to freaking flee and run back into the room to trample again, in addition to the wait state.

krath! This 'you have to not be in combat to charge' is just another error message saying 'you suck at this game.' kinda like the 'you can't flee while on the ground!' message. If i'm on the ground and I type FLEE, why doesn't my character automatically attempt to stand and then flee, with appropriate delays?

[jhunter]

I'd like it much better if the delay from one combat special didn't prevent you from doing a different one under the delay. I think the delay should be attached specifically to the skill that triggered it.

That way, you still wouldn't be able to spam kick over and over again. But you could attempt a kick and follow with a bash attempt during the kick delay.

Oh, and I'm still against slowing combat down any further.

[a strange shadow]

Delay here is what is generally called a wait state.

Which is different than a cooldown.

A cooldown of 30 seconds wouldn't be bad (can't use the skill, can use other commands)

A delay/wait state of 30 seconds would be insane (can't use any skill, and a number of commands)

good post, twilight. exactly what I was going to say.

cooldowns would be awesome and far better for playability than having to freaking flee and run back into the room to trample again, in addition to the wait state.

krath! This 'you have to not be in combat to charge' is just another error message saying 'you suck at this game.' kinda like the 'you can't flee while on the ground!' message. If i'm on the ground and I type FLEE, why doesn't my character automatically attempt to stand and then flee, with appropriate delays?

This stuff. +1

[RogueGunslinger]

This code change was great, and needed. Which is why I started another thread for the discussions of Mounted Combat. The staff fixed a problem with the command, but I think there is much more to be done about charge to make it more realistic, and fun to play with.

I don't think anyone's really saying that this change was a bad one. I think they're saying this change could be better.

[Armaddict]

Different situation. Entirely.

   * Magick is interruptible. That means that if you survive/resist the first spell, you've at least got a shot at escaping or even winning.
   * Magick is extremely powerful in-universe--and by that, I mean that the documentation casts it as extremely powerful.
   * Magickers require karma. Rangers don't.
   * It's the abusive nature of spam-charging that is an issue here, not the power of charge. Casting a spell on someone, a single spell, isn't abusive behavior, no matter how powerful it is. Spam-charging, or spam-disarming, or, hell, spam-anything is pretty abusive. I'm this close to advocating a short "cooldown" (sorry to use MMORPG terminology) on non-magick combat skills, only as long as can be justified realistically while still helping to avoid a spam-whatever situation.


That being said, aside from implementing cooldowns (which I realize would piss, oh, everyone but me off), I think being killed through obvious code abuse is grounds for a resurrection for the victim and harsh punishment for the perpetrator. I know resurrections are delicate situations, but this is one time when I think it's justified.

-Charge is interruptible.  If you avoid it, you have a shot at escaping or even winning, and it has a large enough delay that it also gives you quite the chance at turning things around if you are another 0 karma class.  Just like every other skill of this nature, i.e. bash, disarm, backstab...it only becomes truly dangerous once it is a higher skill level.

-Good thing that 'nerf magick plz' is written as an obvious joke as a mere demonstration that there are -plenty- of things in this game that make you helpless, not just this skill.  It's really the only skill in a ranger's arsenal that makes you so, while as a multitude of 0-karma classes get things that are 1-use helplessness or get multiples of it.  So balance?  Nah.

-Honestly?  There are things discussed in a multitude of threads recently that have been called 'code abuse' in the past, then were dropped to 'twinkish behavior', then to 'frowned upon', and are now called completely acceptable.  Seeing a rather disconcerting trend.

Edited to add:  Not saying this change is bad, I'm saying that calling this one skill so much more horrible than the others is a little ridiculous, particularly when I see numerous lines of logic 'justifying' one change and then calling all the others completely acceptable.  Face it.  Being made completely helpless always sucks.  But if 'balance' is what you're going for, look across the board.

[Majikal]

Being completely helpless to a sorceror throwing fireballs vs being helpless to a less than 2 weeks old ranger who has 0 talent aside from a constant use of the charge skill in combat, the differences should be obvious. Not only is magick a karma required class but it's always watched much more closely then your non karma roles, putting magick on the same playing field as mondanes is silly. The charge skill takes little to no time to reach a 'deadly' level of skill with this abusive tactic.

This is right up there on the list with the open/close curtain battles I've seen go down where the lag of opening the curtain was used by the attacker to close the curtain back, therefore turning a curtain that could be walked through into a steel deathtrap.

[Armaddict]

Being completely helpless to a sorceror throwing fireballs vs being helpless to a less than 2 weeks old ranger who has 0 talent aside from a constant use of the charge skill in combat, the differences should be obvious.

The main difference being that the two week old ranger will miss charges, and will still be getting thwacked by you even while you're stunned when it does succeed.

[spawnloser]

Charge =  bash, but in an easily spam trainable way for a a 0 karma guild that allows you to lock someone into being unable to do ANYTHING.  You spam it, you're a twink and I've seen people do it.  Twinky bastards.  This is the BEST change that could come at this point, if you ask me.

[Armaddict]

Still not as bad as other skills I see both spammed and depended on by other classes that are also generally much more hostile and in a much better position to kill you more of the time.

[tortall]

Being completely helpless to a sorceror throwing fireballs vs being helpless to a less than 2 weeks old ranger who has 0 talent aside from a constant use of the charge skill in combat, the differences should be obvious.

The main difference being that the two week old ranger will miss charges, and will still be getting thwacked by you even while you're stunned when it does succeed.

This. And....

Still not as bad as other skills I see both spammed and depended on by other classes that are also generally much more hostile and in a much better position to kill you more of the time.

Ever get kicked by a dwarf? I have. Not even spam kicked. Twice. Knocked me out. Ever get SPAM KICKED by a 10 day warrior? Yah. 10 day ranger will NOT come out of that fight well.

With this change, it means rangers have 0 advantage in PC vs PC combat. No bash, no kick, no disarm. So.... The usefulness of rangers is what? Oh, yeah, good forage.

[Synthesis]

Being completely helpless to a sorceror throwing fireballs vs being helpless to a less than 2 weeks old ranger who has 0 talent aside from a constant use of the charge skill in combat, the differences should be obvious.

The main difference being that the two week old ranger will miss charges, and will still be getting thwacked by you even while you're stunned when it does succeed.

This. And....

Still not as bad as other skills I see both spammed and depended on by other classes that are also generally much more hostile and in a much better position to kill you more of the time.

Ever get kicked by a dwarf? I have. Not even spam kicked. Twice. Knocked me out. Ever get SPAM KICKED by a 10 day warrior? Yah. 10 day ranger will NOT come out of that fight well.

With this change, it means rangers have 0 advantage in PC vs PC combat. No bash, no kick, no disarm. So.... The usefulness of rangers is what? Oh, yeah, good forage.

Tortall, you obviously don't know what you're talking about.

If a warrior even -uses- the kick command in a PvP situation, the target can easily flee out and be 10 leagues away by the time the command delay wears off.  Not only that, you have to have teh UBERZ strength now for kick to even do any damage vs. armor. (Even with the skill maxed or nearly maxed, my last warrior with 'good' human strength had 90% of his kicks stopped cold by armor.)

Bash and subdue are the only two skills that warriors have that can "lock" another PC in the same room like charge does.  From what I've seen, neither bash nor subdue has anywhere -near- the likelihood of succeeding as compared to charge, unless you are a half-giant.

So please...don't compare apples to oranges.

[Majikal]

With this change, it means rangers have 0 advantage in PC vs PC combat. No bash, no kick, no disarm. So.... The usefulness of rangers is what? Oh, yeah, good forage.

Someone must have never played a ranger to their full potential, more deadly than any other class once you step into their playground. Maybe I've just had a knack for rangers.

Comparing the strength of kick/bash against the silly strength of a young pc's charge is ridiculous. A warrior has to be on foot, suffers more lag then the victim and you can't bash the already bashed victim which leaves them with a chance to escape, synthesis is dead on in his post. I wish I could paste a log of the charge abuse I witnessed it would sway the minds of many I have no doubt. Unless of course you were the inconsiderate player doing the charge spam, in which case I figure you might try to justify it.

[Dakurus]

Stop with the insinuations.
Stop with the holier then thou.
Stop with the extreme arguments.
Stop with the strawmen.

Presenting opinion, examples, experience, and theory are all possible in a healthy discussion. Starting closer to middle ground and a concious willingness to work to stay on it make for a productive one.

Trolling, entrapment, demeaning, dismissing are part of human behavior, sadly; they are however not welcome here, and most of you are fully capable of resisting the urge to partake. Reread your posts before hitting the "post/submit", and if you can't manage to find a way to say it without the negatives, don't say it.

[Dar]

Here's a situation.

Character A = Victim
Character B = warrior
Character C = Ranger.

If B were to fight A alone, B would be owned very easilly. If B would've fought C alone, C would've been owned within 3-5 rounds tops. C catches A unarmed, with shield alone and tramples him down. C charge locks A, so A cannot draw weps, cant stand, cant flee, cant do 'anything' but speak and emote. Both of B and C's blows get mostly blocked, while A is losing health to charge. A dies.

You can spam kick, you can spam disarm, you can spam many things. But all those things (amongst 0 karma skills) allow a chance for escape, either immediate or after the fact. Even if those skills dont fail, even if you get kicked or disarmed, you can still flee. Charge can reach a point of 100% or 'near' 100% success 'very' easilly and quickly, where flee simply 'stops' working, because the delay on "charge" is shorter then the delay the victim suffers due to being charged.

[Eloran]

You left out bash. Oops.