Way spam

[Clearsighted]

Am I the only one who would use barrier a lot more often, if i wasn't getting this every few seconds?

You suffer from use of the Way.

It seems like a little thing, but it'd be great to turn that off.

[Gimfalisette]

If you're good at barrier, eventually you don't get it that often.

[Synthesis]

I would use barrier a lot more often if it was worth a damn.

Even maxed (for a non-psi), it pretty much sucks, except for certain very infrequent applications.

[Gimfalisette]

Barrier has its uses, but yeah, it really seems weaker than it should be.

[MarshallDFX]

I am noobish and can't see skill levels, so I can't make any statements about the way things -are-... But this is what I would hope:

Max Barrier > Max Psi.

[Synthesis]

It's more like max barrier = max psi...so there's a 50/50 chance of someone contacting you anyway.

[Praetorian]

If you just wanted to get rid of the spam, I'd say just suggest a tweak involving the current brief code.

You must provide one of the following toggles:
         off:All brief settings off.
         all:Turn full brief on.
[OFF] combat:Hide miss messages in combat.
[ON]  psionics:Hide draining messages in psionics.
[OFF]   room:Hide room descriptions.

[Clearsighted]

If you just wanted to get rid of the spam, I'd say just suggest a tweak involving the current brief code.

You must provide one of the following toggles:
         off:All brief settings off.
         all:Turn full brief on.
[OFF] combat:Hide miss messages in combat.
[ON]  psionics:Hide draining messages in psionics.
[OFF]   room:Hide room descriptions.

That'd be great.

[Xagon]

I always likened that spam to be someone coming close to finding your mind (if barriered) or an unconcsious thought being transmitted (if contacting). They make perfect sense IG, as the messages decrease in frequency with your skill.

[FantasyWriter]

I would like for maintainance drain (contact and barrier once they are up) to go down in increments of one instead of 5-15 (for example).

It seems to me that maintaining a link or barrier should be a slow steady drain instead of an occasional burst.

[Lizzie]

The whole stun-draining thing is unnervingly overdone, across the board. Your typical "person who works for someone in their hunting/military unit, who is a ranger" assigned to escort their employer from point A to point B. Sounds simple enough right?

hp/HP; v/V; 100/100 stun points.

listen on
scan on
guard agent
Agent says, "barrier up, I don't want anyone knowing where we're going."
barrier
Your eyes roll up and you fall unconscious.

Or even worse more frustrating..
listen on
scan on
guard agent
The agent ways you, "What's the status of the recruit standing next to you?"
psi agent
You suffer from use of the way, but can't find the agent's mind, even though his barrier is down, and he's standing next to you. You suffer more than usual because you're standing up.
psi agent
You pass out from stun drain.

I hate the whole mishmosh of changes that were made. It was too much stun change, and too broad a sweep of affected skills.

[valeria]

Once upon a time when I was more of a noobish noob than I am now, I had a very low endurance character who had 81 stun.

She could only way four times before being in dire danger of passing out, IF she contacted a mind on the first try (ha ha ha... ha), WHILE resting.  People would complain about her not waying them for assignments etc, not realizing that it was because she couldn't.

And just forget barrier.  There was no such thing as her having or maintaining a barrier.  The random stun drain was just crazy, because often I could barely manage a 'cease', it ticked along so fast.

Moral of the story- I don't know, but that seems ridiculous. 

In short, I agree with FW.  Smaller increments, faster drains, would make more sense to me intellectually.  Turning the messages off I'm not so keen on, because unless the drain was popping a prompt every time it did it, you could just keel over without knowing why.  Especially on a fast stun-drain character.

[RogueGunslinger]

The whole stun-draining thing is unnervingly overdone, across the board. Your typical "person who works for someone in their hunting/military unit, who is a ranger" assigned to escort their employer from point A to point B. Sounds simple enough right?

hp/HP; v/V; 100/100 stun points.

listen on
scan on
guard agent
Agent says, "barrier up, I don't want anyone knowing where we're going."
barrier
Your eyes roll up and you fall unconscious.

Or even worse more frustrating..
listen on
scan on
guard agent
The agent ways you, "What's the status of the recruit standing next to you?"
psi agent
You suffer from use of the way, but can't find the agent's mind, even though his barrier is down, and he's standing next to you. You suffer more than usual because you're standing up.
psi agent
You pass out from stun drain.

I hate the whole mishmosh of changes that were made. It was too much stun change, and too broad a sweep of affected skills.

If you're too weak to focus on both scanning, listening and waying, stick to maybe just waying? That or do your job bad. There's nothing wrong with that either.

I'm pretty sure staff don't want you to easily be doing all three of those things at once.

[musashi]

Once upon a time when I was more of a noobish noob than I am now, I had a very low endurance character who had 81 stun.

She could only way four times before being in dire danger of passing out, IF she contacted a mind on the first try (ha ha ha... ha), WHILE resting.  People would complain about her not waying them for assignments etc, not realizing that it was because she couldn't.

And just forget barrier.  There was no such thing as her having or maintaining a barrier.  The random stun drain was just crazy, because often I could barely manage a 'cease', it ticked along so fast.

Moral of the story- I don't know, but that seems ridiculous. 

In short, I agree with FW.  Smaller increments, faster drains, would make more sense to me intellectually.  Turning the messages off I'm not so keen on, because unless the drain was popping a prompt every time it did it, you could just keel over without knowing why.  Especially on a fast stun-drain character.

On the other side of the fence ... I've played a character with poor endurance and only like 86 stamina or something. Afte a bit of practice and a few days played, he was able to have a barrier up all the time while wandering around doing stuff; yes his barrier dropped his stun to a max of 70, but he rarely dropped below 68 stun when those "suffering from the way" messages came along. And though that PC did not have scan and listen, my other rangers PC's have, and when you get good at those skills, the drain on your stunfor using them actually drops to around only 3 points off your max. Maybe less ... I dunno how maxed my PC ranger was.

[Clearsighted]

I guess one of the reasons I hate Way spam is because it makes arming at work a pain in the ass. I have to either check the window each time it flashes, or else I turn off the flashiness, and something eats me while I'm doing my job.

But if arming at work is wrong, I don't want to be right.

[Gagula]

But if arming at work is wrong, I don't want to be right.

Amen!  Preach it!

Edited to remove unconcerned points.

[FuSoYa]

If you just wanted to get rid of the spam, I'd say just suggest a tweak involving the current brief code.

You must provide one of the following toggles:
         off:All brief settings off.
         all:Turn full brief on.
[OFF] combat:Hide miss messages in combat.
[ON]  psionics:Hide draining messages in psionics.
[OFF]   room:Hide room descriptions.

I would be in FULL support of this.

Brandon

[Sephiroto]

I also hate to "suffer from the use of the Way" three times in five seconds (which can occasionally happen), especially while playing a non-combat with less than 90 max stun before using barrier.  Dispite how draining it is, I don't have any hard feelings about how it eats up stun points  It would be nice if we could add a prompt for basic psionic status, e.g., "barrier" "contact" "none" and simply have the brief code option to alleviate way drainage messages.

Barrier:  I dislike how weak it is.  All stats and skills equal, it should take a little more effort for Amos to contact Malik when he is actively barriering his mind, right?  If not, I'd like it to be that way.  Wisdom certainly helps, but I'd like to see it be a little bit stronger across the board.  Also, how about we only lose stun points when we are defending against psionic intrusion instead of incurring residual stun drain?

On the other hand, I won't complain about the stun issues with listen/watch/scan/guard/barrier.  The stun drainage caps, or whatever one calsl them, were put in to reflect the amount of concentration that these skills require. 

My suggestion to each of you is that if you are playing a PC who is guarding, scanning, listening, and psi'ing contacts at the same time (or using barrier), you should probably ask your boss to hire more minions as scouts, aides, or bodyguards so you can spread out the load.  Asking one person to do all that, do it well, and survive a blow to the head is a bit ridiculous.

[Kryos]

Its an extremely simple matter to squelch output from the MUD client side.  I can't say I'm in favor of having the coding staff waste their time fixing something that can be done user side, and at a far higher level of preference. 

[Marauder Moe]

While we're at it, let's add settings to hide messages about having Krath fever, and hunger up until the point where starvation causes loss of health, and those pesky skellebain echoes...




Messages like "You suffer from use of the way" is the game telling us that our characters are experiencing something.  Instead of ignoring them, we (myself included, because I'm not good about it either) really should be working to roleplay these effects better.

[Lizzie]

There's a problem with that echo. I can't take it seriously. If I'm truly "suffering" from use with the way, why does my stun go right back up to normal sometimes, and in fact, on occasion, the stun doesn't actually show any drop at all while I'm suffering? And, if I'm suffering every 3-5 seconds as sometimes I am, you'd think by now I'd be so damned used to the suffering, that I don't even notice it anymore. Really - my character isn't suffering, unless there's an appreciable drop in performance. During those times when I'm actually able to hold a conversation at the bar, keep my eyes open for people hiding under the table, and hold my barrier up against my mind, without more than a moment's drop in stun that restores almost immediately, it's not suffering. At all.

I'm glad I'm not suffering, really. It's more me, the player, being inconvenienced. And everyone my character is trying to roleplay with, when there really -is- an appreciable drop. Because that means that Lord Templar will -not- be getting the response to his Way question. And that guy hiding under the table will -not- be pointed out to the Legion. Or my hunting partner will -not- have the chance to help me fight the goudra. Or the customer will have to wait. Or the guy at the bar who I've been having a conversation with, will be met with silence and inactivity while I frantically try to maintain the barrier without passing out. Or whatever other inconveniences that stun drop causes.

Sometimes, even when I do have barrier up, and it's causing stun drain, I'm actually so busy trying to RP a scene, that I don't pay any attention to it. Because really, the stun drain, with or without an echo, is an OOC inconvenience much much more than it is an IC detriment to my character's health.

[MarshallDFX]

I'm not bothered by the messages.  I forget that I'm Waying with somebody enough as it is.

[Marauder Moe]

There's a problem with that echo. I can't take it seriously. If I'm truly "suffering" from use with the way, why does my stun go right back up to normal sometimes, and in fact, on occasion, the stun doesn't actually show any drop at all while I'm suffering? And, if I'm suffering every 3-5 seconds as sometimes I am, you'd think by now I'd be so damned used to the suffering, that I don't even notice it anymore. Really - my character isn't suffering, unless there's an appreciable drop in performance. During those times when I'm actually able to hold a conversation at the bar, keep my eyes open for people hiding under the table, and hold my barrier up against my mind, without more than a moment's drop in stun that restores almost immediately, it's not suffering. At all.

So it's OK to ignore a coded message as long as said message doesn't significantly impact your stats?

I'm glad I'm not suffering, really. It's more me, the player, being inconvenienced. And everyone my character is trying to roleplay with, when there really -is- an appreciable drop. Because that means that Lord Templar will -not- be getting the response to his Way question. And that guy hiding under the table will -not- be pointed out to the Legion. Or my hunting partner will -not- have the chance to help me fight the goudra. Or the customer will have to wait. Or the guy at the bar who I've been having a conversation with, will be met with silence and inactivity while I frantically try to maintain the barrier without passing out. Or whatever other inconveniences that stun drop causes.

Maybe you shouldn't roleplay the ability to do so many things at once.  If you're chatting at the bar, and a templar comes in your head, tell your friends to shut up while you deal with the templar.  Prioritize your character's attention as though all these things were happening in real-time, rather than expanded MUD time, which includes a scroll up bar.

[RogueGunslinger]

If you're good at barrier, eventually you don't get it that often.

The thread should have ended here. The frequent messages are there to indicate something is happening to you frequently.

[Olgaris]

There's a problem with that echo. I can't take it seriously. If I'm truly "suffering" from use with the way, why does my stun go right back up to normal sometimes, and in fact, on occasion, the stun doesn't actually show any drop at all while I'm suffering? And, if I'm suffering every 3-5 seconds as sometimes I am, you'd think by now I'd be so damned used to the suffering, that I don't even notice it anymore. Really - my character isn't suffering, unless there's an appreciable drop in performance. During those times when I'm actually able to hold a conversation at the bar, keep my eyes open for people hiding under the table, and hold my barrier up against my mind, without more than a moment's drop in stun that restores almost immediately, it's not suffering. At all.

I'm glad I'm not suffering, really. It's more me, the player, being inconvenienced. And everyone my character is trying to roleplay with, when there really -is- an appreciable drop. Because that means that Lord Templar will -not- be getting the response to his Way question. And that guy hiding under the table will -not- be pointed out to the Legion. Or my hunting partner will -not- have the chance to help me fight the goudra. Or the customer will have to wait. Or the guy at the bar who I've been having a conversation with, will be met with silence and inactivity while I frantically try to maintain the barrier without passing out. Or whatever other inconveniences that stun drop causes.

Sometimes, even when I do have barrier up, and it's causing stun drain, I'm actually so busy trying to RP a scene, that I don't pay any attention to it. Because really, the stun drain, with or without an echo, is an OOC inconvenience much much more than it is an IC detriment to my character's health.

Lizzie is going to get a custom message.

Code Select Expand

You lose a few stun points.

[Fnord]

#gag or #sub in most clients will handle annoying messages.

#sub {You suffer*} {The Way is up in yo brainz, makin it sting!}