Change Opponent Change (specify opponent?)

[maxid]

This is a question to see if its possible to get a 'specify opponent' command, or a way to change my opponent before I enter combat with them.

The main reason for this is a bit IC sensitive, so if you dislike any sort of magicker spoilers, please don't read past here.






If I cast a room-effect spell, with my friend in the room (yes, a typically bad idea, but sometimes necessary) it doesn't make sense for my buddy to start hitting me with a club, after I cast it.  It also doesn't make sense for me to have a 50/50 shot of attacking my buddy, when the spell catches them and the guy I /want/ dead.  If there was a way to specify who my target was, before casting the spell (and, for them to designate who THEIR target was) it would go a lot more smoothly.

Another possible way to do this would be to be able to mark someone as 'friendly' before the encounter, so I will never stop attacking them.

Good idea?
Bad idea?
Feedback?

[Qzzrbl]

When facing multiple opponents, typically typing "change opponent <opponent I want to kill>" will set you to attacking the guy you want dead.

And it would generally be a good idea to tell your buddy what's in store for him, so's he can possibly prepare and be ready to change opponents.

[maxid]

When facing multiple opponents, typically typing "change opponent <opponent I want to kill>" will set you to attacking the guy you want dead.

And it would generally be a good idea to tell your buddy what's in store for him, so's he can possibly prepare and be ready to change opponents.

Yes.  I am aware.  However, there is a delay, and there is the chance my buddy or myself might get some hits in, before we can both change opponents.  This is unrealistic ICly, and pretty weird, just due to the code.

Do you see?

[X-D]

Staff has said MANY times that "combat should be confusing" This is why they do not give res for things like keyword errors, misskeys etc.

I agree that it should be confusing and you never should feel safe when casting spell of firey DOOM #666. And the people that are supposed to be friends should also never feel safe around said caster of DOOM666.

I once watched a PC who was just trying to break an action run 3 times through something really mean to his death. Staff answer, No res, he panic'd or got confused, legit death.

And though I think that case was a bit silly and far fetched, over all I agree with past staff view on the matter and would have to vote against the idea.

[Qzzrbl]

When facing multiple opponents, typically typing "change opponent <opponent I want to kill>" will set you to attacking the guy you want dead.

And it would generally be a good idea to tell your buddy what's in store for him, so's he can possibly prepare and be ready to change opponents.

Then set "nosave combat" before the shit goes down, and after the fighting starts, you can "kill <person you want dead>" while your buddy disengages.

Yes.  I am aware.  However, there is a delay, and there is the chance my buddy or myself might get some hits in, before we can both change opponents.  This is unrealistic ICly, and pretty weird, just due to the code.

Do you see?

[Delstro]

An idea that I think has merit for this would be a 'change friendly' option.
If Change Friendly is on, you will not attack anyone following you or that you are following unless you change targets.
If change friendly is off, you be on yo own.

[Synthesis]

I agree that it doesn't make sense for you to start attacking your friend or tribemate, and that it doesn't make sense for them to begin attacking you.  I can also see why people wouldn't necessarily want to encourage the "shoot the hostage" approach to magickal combat (unless your name is Lord Templar Longshanks).

Not to mention there are IC solutions to this problem that you should figure out IC.

[maxid]

An idea that I think has merit for this would be a 'change friendly' option.
If Change Friendly is on, you will not attack anyone following you or that you are following unless you change targets.
If change friendly is off, you be on yo own.

This is all I'm really looking for.  It's a perfect solution to the problem.  I can even see something like, say, a sandstorm or a cave forcing everyone to friendly off for the duration.

All the pointless, empty posts about how staff wants the code to force you to attack someone you'd never actually attack, or how I should 'find out ic' how to make the code not, oocly, force me to attack a specific person are just silly, and unfounded.  Could we keep them to a minimum, while the actual ideas and potential are discussed?  I know threadshitting is a past time on the GDB, but it's really just annoying to slog through it, to reach actual content posts.

[X-D]

All the pointless, empty posts(READ, ones that do not agree with me) about how staff wants the code to force you to attack someone you'd never actually attack, or how I should 'find out ic' how to make the code not, oocly, force me to attack a specific person are just silly, and unfounded.  Could we keep them to a minimum, while the actual ideas (READ ones that do agree with me) and potential are discussed?  I know threadshitting is a past time on the GDB, but it's really just annoying to slog through it, to reach actual content posts(READ Again only the ones that agree with me).

As has been said before, not agreeing with an idea is not thread splitting, pointless, off topic. One cannot have a good discussion without both pros and cons.

You say "That I Never would attack) Is rather silly, even IRL you cannot say that, and I doubt very much you have ever had somebody light off a fireball on you.

And what has also been said, there are already measures in place in game to deal with most of the magickal problems you mentioned.

One of the best ones would be having to play your PC with some kind of common sense...Hey, my friends are here and are not encased in anti doom666 magickal protection...maybe I should not cast doom666.

Meh.

[Yam]

I agree that it's kind of silly to have a player autoattack when a hostile spell is cast at them. Is that how it works currently? I can't remember.

I disagree entirely with the whole business of "friending" people or whatever. I just don't think spells/ranged attacks should invoke the autoattack code.

[Synthesis]

How about you just suck it up and don't use the spell unless you're willing to have both you and your friends suffer the consequences? Sheesh.   

I think it's silly that anyone would think "Well, if I only cast fart of doom at level x, it will only do y damage to my dear buds, and heck, they'll recover that without even having to sleep."  That is a classic example of metagaming.  Instead, how about you just run away and accept the fact that in this circumstance, you are beaten because you were ill-prepared?

I mean...seriously...if you can't wrap your head around how utterly ridiculous it is to light all your friends in the nearby area on fire for some temporary advantage, you have no business playing a magicker.

Like I said earlier, it's not necessarily realistic, but removing it would only encourage bad behavior.

[maxid]

All the pointless, empty posts(READ, ones that do not agree with me) about how staff wants the code to force you to attack someone you'd never actually attack, or how I should 'find out ic' how to make the code not, oocly, force me to attack a specific person are just silly, and unfounded.  Could we keep them to a minimum, while the actual ideas (READ ones that do agree with me) and potential are discussed?  I know threadshitting is a past time on the GDB, but it's really just annoying to slog through it, to reach actual content posts(READ Again only the ones that agree with me).

Useless threadshit

I think its funny that you label my asking you to stop telling me 'of course if someone burns the room with a fireball, I'd start swinging my sword at them immediately, even though its my best friend!' as 'only listening to ideas that I agree with.'

If you can give me a realistic, logical reason for the code to act as it should, rather than a lackluster appeal to authority then I'd love to discuss it.  I welcome discussion of it.  Discussion of the actual idea is what I'm asking for, not your milquetoast 'well, staff said something vaguely similar to this once, so it must apply as Holy Writ' or the go-to threadshit here on the gdb 'Find out IC!'  I am aware that there are countermeasures, I even use them when its a planned act.  But, an  ambush may call for a spray and pray type action, in a harsh desert world.

And, as you'll note; I even said in my op, that it is typically a terrible idea, but sometimes necessary.  If my archnemesis, a Mekillot riding Psion Sorcerer rides in and barrels down at me, with his three undead minions, I just might blast the room, and hope my buddy survives it.  My buddy might even understand the sentiment, and not start hacking away at me.

Oh, and Synthesis, I'm sorry that your imagination can't come up with a single reason a magicker might light the room on fire (this isn't even the spell I'm talking about, btw, but it is a single example of the type I mean) to get away.  What if the magicker is pregnant, and the 'buddy' is the father, and they've agreed that if shit goes down, the magicker will nuke and run, so as best to protect the kid?  What if the magicker has some hold over the nonmagicker 'buddy' (blackmail, etc.) so that if the magicker dies, the nonmagicker's family will be killed?  etc. etc.  I can think up scenarios where this is a logical, and useful tactic all day.  Your argument against it is that 'well it might be abused sometimes' which is the silliest argument against added realism ever.  Staff will catch the people that use it that way, the same way they catch spamcaster, spamburglars, and any number of other people who abuse the code to get an advantage.

[Delstro]

I just don't think spells/ranged attacks should invoke the autoattack code.

Problem solved in the most simple way.

[Synthesis]

No, my argument is that it is metagaming, plain and simple, to inflict magickal injury on your friends because you know they will not be sent to -10 hp by it.

If you would calm down a bit, you'd notice that I agree with you that the way the code handles the penalty to such actions is absurd, but the action itself is also absurd, in my opinion.

You can grasp at straws all day to come up with scenarios where it might be justified, but that's what all twinks do, and they're very good at it.  It doesn't make for a compelling argument to remove the potentially deadly consequences that are currently in place for doing something that, in the vast majority of potential instances, would be poor roleplay.

[Yam]

Maybe we should chill out and not jump down throats quite so hastily.

I can easily think of one situation that would not be metagaming:

Your pal is about to be executed by five soldiers. You cast a room wide spell that will disorient and/or injure everyone, including your friend. It might buy your friend the time to escape, it might kill him. If you do nothing, he will surely die. If you cast your spell, he might die, he might escape relatively unharmed, or he might escape with horrible injuries.

It's not metagaming, but it IS hindered from a roleplay perspective by autoattack being activated from casting a spell. It doesn't make much sense for everyone to automatically charge at some dude casting a spell. It might make sense for a soldier, but it wouldn't make sense for some little waif. Or a noble. Or whatever. I think that's what maxid is getting at, and that makes sense.

[roughneck]

You'll appreciate the autoattack when a magicker casts something and because of the autokill you own his ass before he can get the second spell off because you didn't have to use time thinking, reacting and typing 'kill wiggler'.  As a player of mundanes, I'm thankful for the feature.

[brytta.leofa]

I think there's a lot of merit to the "friend amos" approach.  But I think the ease of creating a friendly fire incident in melee combat is a net negative for the game.

Is the confusion of combat really a feature, or are we just justifying what we've got?

[Synthesis]

I agree that using mass effect spells in several proposed scenarios make sense, but how would you fix auto-attacking for the situations where it makes sense without concomitantly encouraging the use of mass effect spells in situations where it doesn't make sense?

It's definitely not as simple as removing the auto-attack functionality.  That would pretty dramatically change the go/no-go risk/reward/probability of success calculation in a very wide array of PK circumstances...in ways that I don't think anyone would like, but I'm not going to discuss, because I have a bit of a history of getting my posting privs revoked when I start getting specific.

Is the confusion of combat really a feature, or are we just justifying what we've got?

I don't think it's particularly far-fetched to imagine that, in the midst of a raging magickal shitstorm, a person might become confused and swing his sword at a figure in the mess...who just happens to be the wrong person.  While we the players can see "oh, that's a gith...there's Bob...there's Bob's kank," the character himself is seeing "fire, smoke, I'm on fire!, what the fuck, where'd the gith go, where are those screams coming from?, wait, I think that's me...aha, there's something...*slash* Oh shit, was that Bob or the gith?"

I think the 'disengage' command pretty much handles this situation.

[AmandaGreathouse]

Nosave combat?

As far as I know, you'll still fight things, but you just have to type 'kill whatever' first.

Seems like a good solution to me.

[maxid]

I'm actually ok with the removal of the autoattack on being cast at, even if its just for room-effect spells, there is a /significant/ lag between spells, easily long enough to let someone type kill (keyword.) 

And Synthesis, while I see what you're saying, that there is the potential for abuse, like I said before; abusers are going to abuse the code, no matter what, all we can do is report them, and let staff punish them.  Only karma based classes are capable of getting there and, so those players have proven that they're not total twinks.  And it allows for a hundred non-twink, non-calculated omg tactical analysis!! scenarios that are, currently, disallowed due to a ooc mechanism.

I actually don't even see the point of autoattack on spells, it /should/ take a second to recover/get to the magicker/wtfpwn them, because magickers are made of wet paper, up close, and almost nobody plays any sort of fear of magickers at all.

I just don't get it, from an ooc perspective.  And, it forces me to create roundabout, awkward ic justification for it, too.

[AmandaGreathouse]

magickers are made of wet paper, up close, and almost nobody plays any sort of fear of magickers at all.

I just don't get it, from an ooc perspective. 

And, it forces me to create roundabout, awkward ic justification for it, too.

All of the above are great points. Especially the first and last. I'm kind of aggravated with the fact that a merchant pc going out of the city alone has less to fear than a magicker pc doing the same. That seems a bit ridiculous. There are way too many people who actively hunt magickers and do it solo. I could understand if it was groups of people going around like little lynch mobs, but it's not. And the sad part is how effective I've seen it be.

[X-D]

I actually don't even see the point of autoattack on spells, it /should/ take a second to recover/get to the magicker/wtfpwn them, because magickers are made of wet paper, up close,

You would not think that if you ran into any of my mages up close.

and almost nobody plays any sort of fear of magickers at all.

That is because people don't know how to play scary mages.

On topic. I would not mind the ability to toggle autocombat off/on. But I am dead set against friend flags and the like.

[maxid]

I actually don't even see the point of autoattack on spells, it /should/ take a second to recover/get to the magicker/wtfpwn them, because magickers are made of wet paper, up close,

You would not think that if you ran into any of my mages up close.

and almost nobody plays any sort of fear of magickers at all.

That is because people don't know how to play scary mages.

On topic. I would not mind the ability to toggle autocombat off/on. But I am dead set against friend flags and the like.

Yes, some magickers can be monstrous up close.  The vast majority are not.


And, it's not so much that people don't know how to play scary mages (well, it somewhat is, the people who have been playing for a while, and have some mages under their belt are able to use their ooc knowledge of the mechanics to buff their mages faster than newb mages, but that's another thing entirely) it's that pcs break out of the game world, and strut around/outright hunt groups of mages alone, and the code gives common people certain advantages.

So, you're against a code that allows for people to logically, icly decide not to hit a specific person, but not against a code already in place, under nosave combat?

If there was an option for 'nosave combat magick' and 'nosave combat melee' vs 'nosave combat all' so I could still attack back against someone who came at me with a sword, but not someone who cast a roomspell, I'd be more ok with it.

I still prefer the idea that spells don't cause autoattack, though.  It makes more sense that way.

[Delstro]

How about that then, someone mentioned it earlier, but I now believe that is the best idea.

Auto attack is turned off for mass, non-specific targetting, but it remains in place when Joe EvilEye gets shot with evil juice when he is the sole target?

[Qzzrbl]

There are already some IG workarounds for this that aren't hard at all to figure out-- most have been listed already.