As you fall, you land on your neck!

[Reiloth]

As you fall, you land on your neck!

I mean, I understand a critical fail should yield a 'bad result'. But doing 90+ stun damage (I think actually just 'all the stun you have until it knocks you out') seems possibly the most unforgiving coded critical fail beyond a disarm fail.

As with many things in the game, I wish there were aspects that weren't so binary. If, instead, a critical fail yielded a large chunk of damage/stun damage, or falling one room below (but not all the way down, say, the side of a mountain) it seems it would add more to the game.

As it stands, you basically just have to wait ten minutes as a time out.

[Pale Horse]

While I don't care for it, myself, there used to be a time when falling off of your mount could result in a neck snap and instant death.

Perspective.

[RogueGunslinger]

Yeah, this bit of code can go die in a fire.

[Reiloth]

While I don't care for it, myself, there used to be a time when falling off of your mount could result in a neck snap and instant death.

Perspective.

More like progress.

I think the next step is tweaking this bit.

[Armaddict]

I'm not entirely against the way it is, but I'm also not adamant against changing it either.

I'd like to see the critical fail itself do very -minor- damage in stun, because in real life...the mistake itself isn't what generally kills you.  In exchange, give a delay that makes it very hard to stop a fall of any distance.  In this way, critical failing in most places in the game sucks, but isn't very serious, but there is incentive for mediocre climbers to fear large drops.

I only say this as long as the 'attempt to stop a fall' continues to do comparative damage to what it does now.  If that changes, this idea would also change. (And I say this because the delay from a critical fail should be long enough to try and catch yourself after 4 rooms or so of falling.  The 'critical fail' stands for something that makes you lose your grip entirely and have to recover from a mistake.)

[Hauwke]

In my opinion, for realisms sake keep it, that stuff is dangerous af and being only knocked out for an hour IG is the only consequences?
For playabilities sake it could do half stun half physical. Eg:

100 hp and 100 stun.

Crit fail a climb check 1 room up:
You slip and smash your head against the climbing surface!
(50 hp damage and 50 stun damage)

Crit fail a climb check 3 rooms up:
You slip and smash your head against the climbing surface!
(Instant 50 damage across the board)
You plummet to the ground below!
You plummet to the ground below! Etc

You hit the ground maybe a mantis head what with having been half healthed maybe your a badass and and have the hp to still survive the rest of the fall idk.
Maybe reduce the damage to just 1/4 of hp instead of half.

Tl;dr just an idea, that seems realistic to me as a person.

[Yam]

It's stupid and makes climbing gambling with your life unless you have 100% nofail climb (i.e. you're a ranger or a burglar).

Deaths from this thing usually just result in PCs randomly disappearing rather than any meaningful storyline advancement

[Armaddict]

It's stupid and makes climbing gambling with your life unless you have 100% nofail climb (i.e. you're a ranger or a burglar).

This is why I think what I said works.  The crit fail is no longer that much worse than a normal climb fail unless there's a long drop beneath it, because the crit basically makes it so you don't get as much of a chance to stop that fall.

[Majikal]

Why not a crit fail in climbing result in you just losing your grip and falling, period. You find no purchase, whoops! Then decide if you're going to scramble or take the fall.

Let the height of your climbing be the real threat.

As it stands the climb code is kind of wonky and I've simply gotten used to how reliable/not reliable it can be.

I can spam-climb up all day with little threat once I've bypassed the (crit-fail insta-ko phase). Climbing down or horizontally = danger of falling. Climbing up should yield as much danger as climbing horizontally and down, imo.

[valeria]

This really does feel like the artifact of a bygone era to me.

[Dunetrade55]

I hate this bit of code, and I MOSTLY see it when I go to flee from combat in a room with a climb exit and I happen to get unlucky and the random direction is up. You can guess what happens next.

[Delirium]

I hate this bit of code, and I MOSTLY see it when I go to flee from combat in a room with a climb exit and I happen to get unlucky and the random direction is up. You can guess what happens next.

Thank goodness they fixed the bug where even if you succeeded your climb check you'd fall.

Next step is to devalue the hell out of climb-check exits so that you never choose those on a flee if any other exit is available, unless you manually type in the direction, i.e. >flee e

Pls.

[th3kaiser]

Why not a crit fail in climbing result in you just losing your grip and falling, period. You find no purchase, whoops! Then decide if you're going to scramble or take the fall.

Let the height of your climbing be the real threat.

As it stands the climb code is kind of wonky and I've simply gotten used to how reliable/not reliable it can be.

I can spam-climb up all day with little threat once I've bypassed the (crit-fail insta-ko phase). Climbing down or horizontally = danger of falling. Climbing up should yield as much danger as climbing horizontally and down, imo.

All of this. Falling is already pretty damaging. Having the absurd code for crit-failing just makes me and lots of other PCs rarely if ever use climb unless they're certain guilds. I've gotten used to it over the years, but that doesn't make it any less absurd. It just means we get newer players who aren't used to the code ending up with characters who die in a frustrating fashion.

[Talia]

Upon request, we've changed it to this:

> As you fall, you drop the meat in the dust!

[Desertman]

Upon request, we've changed it to this:

> As you fall, you drop the meat in the dust!

This was funnier to me than it should have been.

[Brokkr]

Why not a crit fail in climbing result in you just losing your grip and falling, period. You find no purchase, whoops! Then decide if you're going to scramble or take the fall.

Let the height of your climbing be the real threat.

As it stands the climb code is kind of wonky and I've simply gotten used to how reliable/not reliable it can be.

I can spam-climb up all day with little threat once I've bypassed the (crit-fail insta-ko phase). Climbing down or horizontally = danger of falling. Climbing up should yield as much danger as climbing horizontally and down, imo.

What would the threat be from climbing up from a normal room be then?

[Raptor_Dan]

I want to be able to jump of a building without taking damage until I hit the bottom. For certain reasons. As it is, I -think- you'll take damage all the way down, but I wish there were a way around this, perhaps saving up all of the !damnage! until the end.

[Majikal]

Why not a crit fail in climbing result in you just losing your grip and falling, period. You find no purchase, whoops! Then decide if you're going to scramble or take the fall.

Let the height of your climbing be the real threat.

As it stands the climb code is kind of wonky and I've simply gotten used to how reliable/not reliable it can be.

I can spam-climb up all day with little threat once I've bypassed the (crit-fail insta-ko phase). Climbing down or horizontally = danger of falling. Climbing up should yield as much danger as climbing horizontally and down, imo.

What would the threat be from climbing up from a normal room be then?

This is true, it would wipe out the threat of climbing up from a one room drop. Which I also dislike.  

I'm not sure what a good balance would be, I just wish it was also possible to fall while climbing upwards. Maybe the fall on your neck thing for ground floor crit fails, and some sort of scramble for purchase/let go of the wall fail for climbing up in fall rooms?

[Patuk]

Why not a crit fail in climbing result in you just losing your grip and falling, period. You find no purchase, whoops! Then decide if you're going to scramble or take the fall.

Let the height of your climbing be the real threat.

As it stands the climb code is kind of wonky and I've simply gotten used to how reliable/not reliable it can be.

I can spam-climb up all day with little threat once I've bypassed the (crit-fail insta-ko phase). Climbing down or horizontally = danger of falling. Climbing up should yield as much danger as climbing horizontally and down, imo.

What would the threat be from climbing up from a normal room be then?

Make a crit fail appear as a success, and cause the character to drop then? You still fall as if you had done so from a one room distance, but not with the insane amounts of stun damage it currently does. You simply fall a bit. If you crit fail while way up somewhere, things become much more dangerous, but climbing up that high should be that dangerous.

[Majikal]

It's harder to balance than I expected at a glance, I've actually started thinking about this pretty hard now. Cause I want all the falls to be dangerous as Brokkr said and I want long falls to be deadly as they should be.

You climb up.
You climb up.
you fall and land on your neck! (-100 stun) However you don't codedly fall unless KO.

I think I would like something more like:

You climb up.
You climb up.
You try to climb up, but slip. (fail)
You try to climb up, but lose your footing. (crit fail) (take damage equivalent to 'scrambling for purchase but finding nothing')
You plummet. (get ready for the pain, or scramble for purchase)

But how would you balance the dangers of the short climbs? Being able to spam up from a one-room climb would be kind of lame, so maybe keep the current feature around for that? Maybe swap it to instant one-room fall damage? I suppose I'm in favor of making climb more dangerous, especially for the ill-prepared.

[Armaddict]

If climbdirection == up
  critfail == -50 hp, -100 stun, -50 dkp, no fall

if climbdirection!=up
  critfail == -10 hp, -10 stun, hilarity and notice to the room that you are a noob, playerstatus == freefallin'.


Frankly, critfailing on an up-climb of one room isn't generally disastrous.  Even just adding a wider range of possible damage values would help with this, allowing for big mistakes and small mistakes.

[Reiloth]

If climbdirection == up
  critfail == -50 hp, -100 stun, -50 dkp, no fall

if climbdirection!=up
  critfail == -10 hp, -10 stun, hilarity and notice to the room that you are a noob, playerstatus == freefallin'.


Frankly, critfailing on an up-climb of one room isn't generally disastrous.  Even just adding a wider range of possible damage values would help with this, allowing for big mistakes and small mistakes.

I think more this than anything. A wider range of damage/stun for critfail would be nice. I've had my first attempt climbing up from a 'ground floor' room yield a necksnap, and then waiting 10 minutes to wake up, rinse and repeat.

[Case]

I have some permanent injuries from falling about 13 ft on a rock wall, as Badskeelz can attest - he got to deal with me when it blew up as sciatica suddenly. Any fall over your own height is a serious fall. On the fall I did this, I still completed the climb.

You shouldn't be able to land on your neck unless you tumble and roll.

I think it should come down to weight/height vs the type of climb it is. Some climbs are safe or easy to test or recover from, some are definitely not. If you're taller, you can handle short height climbs much more easier. I can take falls about 2 or 3 m / 7-10ft off the ground without issue, but these would injure my much shorter climbing partner. The more you weigh, the harder it is to climb and the far worse a fall is.

Guess it depends how high one room up is meant to be.

[Dunetrade55]

I guess it's different for everyone. I've leapt from heights above one story, but never quite two, with little issue, but I rolled, have been trained to roll properly, and it's different leaping from falling. I've had a few bad falls, tumbling down rocky hillsides and the like (hint: it's not up to you when you stop after a certain point, it's when getting enmeshed in concertina wire becomes a relieving experience), had a ledge give out on me about fifteen feet up and just splat right on my back (flopped, I guess a sort-of breakfall?). Once I was able to breathe again I just started laughing. It IS quite surprising to me I wasn't injured, that, I know of, permanently.

[Case]

I guess it's different for everyone. I've leapt from heights above one story, but never quite two, with little issue, but I rolled, have been trained to roll properly, and it's different leaping from falling. I've had a few bad falls, tumbling down rocky hillsides and the like (hint: it's not up to you when you stop after a certain point, it's when getting enmeshed in concertina wire becomes a relieving experience), had a ledge give out on me about fifteen feet up and just splat right on my back (flopped, I guess a sort-of breakfall?). Once I was able to breathe again I just started laughing. It IS quite surprising to me I wasn't injured, that, I know of, permanently.

Oh I meant 2 or 3 m up, not ft. I'm a britisher. I'll edit.

[Dunetrade55]

AH! 13 meters, FUCK... that's a good ways. Damn.

[valeria]

I think there should be risk climbing up from a normal room.  But I think that risk should be a little more proportionate.  Maybe a larger hit to stamina, some stun, some hp, and delay (which would still suck in a room with a critter in it without being a no matter what instant death) instead of 'all your stun no matter what.'

[Dunetrade55]

All your stun are belong to us.

[Case]

AH! 13 meters, FUCK... that's a good ways. Damn.

No it was four metres. If I fell 13, I'd have hit the ground and died.

[path]

It's kind've a death trap. Dying to PKs is fun. Dying to a failed climb check is sorrow.

[The Warshaper]

If a necker lands on its neck in an empty street, does it make a sound?

[Raptor_Dan]

If a necker lands on its neck in an empty street, does it make a sound?

Yes, the game codedly whispers into the ears of other neckers, "Boooots." This is why you see so many of them jump and run out of the Gaj for no reason.

[Dunetrade55]

It's kind've a death trap. Dying to PKs is fun. Dying to a failed climb check is sorrow.

Yeah, had it happen to a spec app I was enjoying once. Sigh. At ground level, because, flee.

[Dar]

Why not just make crit fail remove all available stamina.  Just that. That simple. While at the same time scrambling for purchase take no stamina what so ever. If you're doing a 1 room climb, well then you gotta rest a lot. If you're up 5 stories and crit fail, then guess what ... you cant climb up. You got plenty of time to emote and do whatever you like and then ... you're letting go.

If you want to. You can scramble for purchase and stop the fall. Which will get you stuck again, since no stamina, but instead of 5 room fall, you're dropping down 3 room fall. And so on.

[Dunetrade55]

Why not just make crit fail remove all available stamina.  Just that. That simple. While at the same time scrambling for purchase take no stamina what so ever. If you're doing a 1 room climb, well then you gotta rest a lot. If you're up 5 stories and crit fail, then guess what ... you cant climb up. You got plenty of time to emote and do whatever you like and then ... you're letting go.

If you want to. You can scramble for purchase and stop the fall. Which will get you stuck again, since no stamina, but instead of 5 room fall, you're dropping down 3 room fall. And so on.

Still a death sentance, unless you're a city elf and in a certain tile, running costs stamina. If you're fleeing, you have good reason to get away.

[Reiloth]

Attempting to scramble for purchase can be a death sentence in and of itself.

[Dunetrade55]

I've heard ICly it's better to just drop than attempt to grab a ledge unless you're good at it.

[BadSkeelz]

I just skip climbing tasks and RPTs. If it's really important staff will bring it to us.

[WarriorPoet]

I hate this piece of code. Hatehatehte it.

[Reiloth]

As I understand it, a climbing/falling room has the same difficulty across the board. So a 'short climb' is just as hard as a 'long climb', it's just that you have to climb more rooms, and therefore combat more risk of failure, especially if you are climbing down.

It'd be cool if:
*Climbing ropes were more useful climbing down than climbing up.
*Climbing equipment were more useful in both scenarios, especially if used in tandem with climbing ropes.
*A climbing rope modified the climbing difficulty of a room.

In a crazy ideal world i'd like:
*A climbing rope can be staked at the top of a difficult climb.
*A climbing rope 'item' is then present in all the falling rooms below it.
*A climbing rope can have a length assigned to it -- So some rope may not make it all the way down a long, long drop.
*A person with or without climbing can use the rope. Obviously a person with climbing would be much better at using it.
*Climbing spikes help in climbing up, and in 'scrambling for purchase'.
*Other 'spiked' equipment, such as gloves or boots, help 'scramble for purchase', and minorly help in climbing up, but don't help in climbing down.

If, there were also a variance in difficulty for rooms, it may go a long way in ameliorating the problem. So, distance has less to do with it overall than actual difficulty.

Is it a vertical climb? Mostly vertical, but with footholds/handholds? Not that bad, and a pretty short climb to boot?

Being able to apply like 'Difficulty_1' to 'Difficulty_5' could make for interesting climbing encounters, where a 'mountain climb' isn't simply about the distance to the top. There could be areas that are really hard without climbing equipment, and areas that are OK to free climb to.

At the end of the day, it'd be nice to get rid of this piece of code or replace it with something a little less 'Ginka Sapped you'.

[Dunetrade55]

I think we're all ignoring the elephant in the room which is up climbing tiles in the city proper and how they interact with conflicts with aggro mobs. (yes, there are some aggro city mobs, and they tend to DROP down on you from above, meaning "up" is still a valid flee direction). Please fix this bit of code before the next HRPT is miscalculated as far as the estimated death toll.

[Reiloth]

I think we're all ignoring the elephant in the room which is up climbing tiles in the city proper and how they interact with conflicts with aggro mobs. (yes, there are some aggro city mobs, and they tend to DROP down on you from above, meaning "up" is still a valid flee direction). Please fix this bit of code before the next HRPT is miscalculated as far as the estimated death toll.

Ah, good point.

Yeah I feel like 'up down and fleeing into a room that is a fall room' should be removed. I forgot this recently happened to my PC (Fleeing from combat 'up').

[Dunetrade55]

I think we're all ignoring the elephant in the room which is up climbing tiles in the city proper and how they interact with conflicts with aggro mobs. (yes, there are some aggro city mobs, and they tend to DROP down on you from above, meaning "up" is still a valid flee direction). Please fix this bit of code before the next HRPT is miscalculated as far as the estimated death toll.

Ah, good point.

Yeah I feel like 'up down and fleeing into a room that is a fall room' should be removed. I forgot this recently happened to my PC (Fleeing from combat 'up').

You haven't really played the game until you've gotten all invested in your character and find yourself screaming WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUCK?! at that mantis head. Then you rationalize it by saying, well, my PC mistook themselves for motherfucking Jackie Chan... then you eventually realize, it wasn't just you, ALL Zalanthans think they're Jackie Chan and that corner kicks are a valid escape plan. It's immersion breaking in that it's hideously suicidal, unless, you ARE Jackie Chan, and, you're not.

[Delirium]

I hate this bit of code, and I MOSTLY see it when I go to flee from combat in a room with a climb exit and I happen to get unlucky and the random direction is up. You can guess what happens next.

Thank goodness they fixed the bug where even if you succeeded your climb check you'd fall.

Next step is to devalue the hell out of climb-check exits so that you never choose those on a flee if any other exit is available, unless you manually type in the direction, i.e. >flee e

Pls.

Yeah. You should NEVER default flee up/down or into a climb room unless you manually type that direction.

Going lemming is ridiculous way to die.

[Delirium]

edit: oops again.

my connection hates me.

[Delirium]

edit: Oops.

You attempt to post, but slip and land on your neck!

[Dunetrade55]

Oops.

[Chettaman]

I'm pretty sure they fixed the automatic climb-flee fail thing.

let's see... do the fall on your neck damage /after/ you hit the ground and not after you fail. - so you don't end up knocked out in the air get your wits only to fall and knock yourself out again.

I also have been wanting to idea ropes be like tent items.
unroll rope (or for sake of a different command)
>stake rope ---- you unravel and set up a climbing rope.
And then every room below this rope has +to climbing skill or  -climbing difficulty or however the game works.


[ if room = rope_Stake
climb_difficulty  = 3
else climb difficulty = 9001 ]

[Reiloth]

Having encountered this jewel of a piece of code again tonight, I have to say -- It sucks. I hate it. It makes me not want to play a sneaky character that climbs at all, because the risk of climbing is like playing with fire.

At the very least, make it a branch able skill that anyone can achieve, such as ride, instead of an archaic skill that needs to branch from something unrelated. Climbing isn't rocket science.

[Dunetrade55]

A lampshade might not be Jackie Chan.

[RogueGunslinger]

I've found some neat 'rinthi places by accidentally fleeing up where there's no visible up exit. But it's pretty dumb, I agree it shouldn't happen.

[Dunetrade55]

It's the dumbest kind of death ever. I'd rather hear the words "rough circle" spoken from the shadows with no punctuation or capitalization, then get backstabbed by the extremely short and thick figure in a dark, hooded cloak, than die this way AGAIN.

[evilcabbage]

i want to end all of your flee debates by saying this:

i had a pc whose life was literally saved

by fleeing

up

into a climb room.

so how about -no-.

[Reiloth]

i want to end all of your flee debates by saying this:

i had a pc whose life was literally saved

by fleeing

up

into a climb room.

so how about -no-.

How about yes?

Just because a piece of code saves your PC, but is otherwise unrealistic or stupid, doesn't mean it shouldn't be changed. We call that a 'well meaning bug'.

[evilcabbage]

fleeing "up" is not a bug, it just means your pc opted to jump up a cliff instead of die.

[Yam]

Your position is unassailable.

[Hauwke]

Em hocks large rocks up the cliff face aiming for %evilcabbage head.

[evilcabbage]

flee self

you do not flee, you are a cabbage!

assimilate hauwke
You begin to assimilate Hauwke, adding him to the Cabbage Hivemind.

[Reiloth]

I can't imagine a scenario where you are fleeing an opponent 'up' a cliff or whatever (Call it a wall), and they don't y'know...Kill you. For turning your back and putting yourself in an incredibly vulnerable position. I mean, we aren't talking about our PCs being orcs from the Moria scene of LoTR Fellowship of the Ring where they crawl upside down out of the asshole looking opening thing in the roof.

[evilcabbage]

i mean, maybe your parry threw them off balance just enough for you to jump up the cliff and save yourself? it works. it isn't a bug. this game isn't super realism simulator. there are things that our pcs can do that normal humans cannot do, despite the fact that our pcs are arguably weaker than most real life humans.

[Reiloth]

It isn't a super realism simulator, but it does try to closely mirror RL when it comes to things like physics, and common sense.