Delay before fleeing

[Dresan]

Flee should have a small delay before execution.

>flee
>You prepare to escape...

-With higher levels of flee you you get a message of 'You prepare to flee to <direction>'.
-Optional: Enemies with high level watch skill, that are watching you might be able to notice that you are about to flee in a certain direction. 

The idea has been suggested before, without too much negative feedback. With the game has changed a lot over the last few years and with the guild change, I want to dust the idea off again. I believe that a large portion of the dangers associated with  this idea are offset with guilds starting off with higher skills to help them perform better in their desired environment.

Here are some pros, since the con is basically people will need to be more careful and/or they will die more. 

• Encounters becomes more dangerous,again offset by higher starting skills
• sub-guilds with flee become more tempting to new classes without flee
• Rescue/guard/flee becomes more invaluable
• RP becomes a more tempting solution as opposed to insta flee

[Eyeball]

I don't see this is being realistic. The attacker already has an advantage in that he can effectively teleport from one league away to within striking distance in one command.

If I'm out riding an erdlu, and some raider tries to come at me with a plodding sunback, why should he even have a chance to succeed at all? Unless it's a thick sandstorm or densely forested area or something, I should be able to spot him and be on my way long before he arrives, easily outrunning him.

Instead of just trying to skew things toward raiders, why not implement a 'chase' command. At one league away the raider types 'chase tressy.tressed north' and off it goes. The raider's mount starts running. The tressy-tressed woman sees 'You see <raider> riding toward you in a cloud of dust!' and has time to hop onto a mount and start running. If the raider is faster (combination of ride skill and beast), after a couple or a few rooms he closes in to within striking distance, which both parties are informed of. If he loses sight of the would-be victim, pursuit ends. Or he can choose to stop the pursuit (e.g. if the tressy-tressed woman gets too close to a city gates).

[James de Monet]

Doesn't the new "threaten" command kind of obviate both of these?  Ride in (advantage raider, due to element of surprise, and benefit of the uncertainty of their intent) key threaten, voila.  No need to delay the flee.  If the raider's threaten succeeds, the delay wouldn't make a difference.  If it doesn't, the raider needs to get better at threaten, not get a second chance to catch the victim.

[Hauwke]

Doesn't the new "threaten" command kind of obviate both of these?  Ride in (advantage raider, due to element of surprise, and benefit of the uncertainty of their intent) key threaten, voila.  No need to delay the flee.  If the raider's threaten succeeds, the delay wouldn't make a difference.  If it doesn't, the raider needs to get better at threaten, not get a second chance to catch the victim.

You also shouldnt be able to spam flee, you failed, you know what that means? It means a thing blocked you from leaving or something along those lines, the fact that you can spam it is a little broken because there is no delay on it at all.

I would he rather happy if there was an -after- delay, so you do instantly flee, but if you fail you are going to have to wait a few moments before trying to bolt off again.

There are a few situations this is unideal, one example would be sparring newbies in clans like the Byn, or particularly low hp characters with a high strength one, but honestly, the onus is on the player to not kill the shit out of the guy on accident. (or do, I am totally down for that.)

[deskoft]

Doesn't the new "threaten" command kind of obviate both of these?  Ride in (advantage raider, due to element of surprise, and benefit of the uncertainty of their intent) key threaten, voila.  No need to delay the flee.  If the raider's threaten succeeds, the delay wouldn't make a difference.  If it doesn't, the raider needs to get better at threaten, not get a second chance to catch the victim.

I was gonna say the same. It strikes me as if with the new threaten skill, someone good at threatening people will be able to surround you and stop your fleeing attempts.

[MatisseOrOtherwise]

Also, there's already a chase.

[Dresan]

Doesn't the new "threaten" command kind of obviate both of these?  Ride in (advantage raider, due to element of surprise, and benefit of the uncertainty of their intent) key threaten, voila.  No need to delay the flee.  If the raider's threaten succeeds, the delay wouldn't make a difference.  If it doesn't, the raider needs to get better at threaten, not get a second chance to catch the victim.

Nope.

Even if it had 100 percent success rate, the threaten skill an RP tool at best. It prevents the need for raiders to run in and type kill and give potential repercussions if the victim tries to flee as the raider is trying to chat. Basically it just a skill that promotes RP in my eyes.

Adding a delay on flee is something that promotes death if caught in a unfavorable situation without sufficient preparation/caution. The success rate of flee at low level or even without the skill is  significant enough to warrant a small delay.

[In Dreams]

Being someone with really poor reflexes that is just not good at typical videogames in the first place who absolutely loathes, loathes, loathes the instantaneous nature of combat here (IE, someone puts in one command without a single emote, so you and your twenty-days-of-emotional-investment are instantly irrevocably fucked, likely with no further roleplay opportunities whatsoever, (rant over)), I think there very very much needs to be a delay on initiating combat just so the receiving party can actually be prepared to offer a realistic reaction before they're dead.

Until that's done there is absolutely, positively no way this would be a good change. I personally would riot. I'm almost rioting just from the suggestion of it.

[RogueGunslinger]

Spaming flee should not be a thing. Whatever solves that sounds good to me. Its very easy to escape combat in this game after you have been playing for long enough.

A delay before attacking is an interesting idea. Not sure how I feel about it. For instance how could that ever work with archery?

[Namino]

Spaming flee should not be a thing. Whatever solves that sounds good to me. Its very easy to escape combat in this game after you have been playing for long enough.

Freaking super agree with this. It is laughably easy to escape combat even if you're a noncombat character being engaged by a powerhouse. Sparing details, I have caught other PCs utterly flat-footed on the jump before, in just about the worst possible context, and despite reeling them over and over in every round of combat, there was no stopping them simply hopping up, opening the door, and running out before the kill delay had even worn off. Threaten doesn't solve this. It's just a 65% less effective kill command that gives you a chance to RP.

The ease of escaping combat is practically ingrained in Armageddon culture at this point. It's practically a meme by now that the only place you stand a better-than-nominal chance of being murdered without getting away is in a locked apartment simply because that's the context in which spam flee won't work. There are other examples of groups of PCs having to go to extreme lengths requiring specialized karma-only roles just to stop people from being able to spam flee -- a skill a one day, zero karma character has access to.

I really would like to see something done, and this is coming from someone who has to rely on flee more than most.

[Riev]

My only concern with an AFTER delay on flee is that you already technically get delay from running movement into another room, so if you successfully flee, and enter another room... you're stuck there for a few seconds and unable to do anything else.

Threaten really is a good RP tool, and can show that you're interested in a scene, not an immediate gank situation. However, it doesn't stop someone from typing "flee self" over and over again until they succeed, and then using "stop" to clear their queue.

It'd be nice if a failed flee caused an AFTER delay, but on success there is no delay.

[MatisseOrOtherwise]

If a delay /is/ put on flee, it should not include a notification like "x gets ready to flee north!". Because otherwise, that puts /far/ too much power into the hands of raiders and such.

And like Riev said, if there's an after delay, it should be on fail, not on success.

So, after-delay on fail with no weird notification thing, I actually like that. Little bit of balance.

[Riev]

Technically, you would see that they successfully fled "east" as you do now, so the raider still knows where they went but should hopefully be in Kill lag and can't get to them.

I've just been part of too many spam flee situations (some on my end, admittedly) where I know the only way I'm going to die is if they get an attack of opportunity and do frightening damage. Reel code seems significantly weaker lately, so the lag it produces is negligible.

At least with a delay on a flee failure, there are a couple extra seconds where a Raider can do damage or say something, etc. I shouldn't be able to attempt to flee 8 times before the raider gets another swing on me.

[Hitsuchi]

What if a failed flee also gave an attack of opportunity? What do we think would change about combat?

[sleepyhead]

Is it possible to have a delay that decreases as the flee skill increases?

[Brokkr]

People haven't apparently heard of bash:  Noted.

People want Threaten to be more evil:  Noted.

People don't fail flee 15 times in a row like I do:  Noted.

[Riev]

Snarkiness from staff aside:

You can fail 15 times in a row, before the raider is even out of kill lag to do anything else.

Even on a 50day warrior I couldn't get Bash over Advanced, and the code takes Height far too seriously for a successful bash. At least a failed backstab just puts you in lag. A failed bash puts you in a horribly disadvantageous position.

[Namino]

People haven't apparently heard of bash:  Noted.

People want Threaten to be more evil:  Noted.

People don't fail flee 15 times in a row like I do:  Noted.

You cannae bash the wee laddie if you're delayed from kill while they spam flee fourteen times.

Edit: Granted you could OPEN combat with a bash, unless they're mounted in which case you cannot. Or, paradoxically, if they're already sitting, which was one of the conditions of my earlier reference to 'catching a PC flat-footed in the worst possible context' and still watching them spam flee out.

What if a failed flee also gave an attack of opportunity? What do we think would change about combat?

I think this is probably too much. I genuinely believe just a 'disarm/kick/bash' level tick after a failed flee would be sufficient.

[Molten Heart]

.

[Namino]

What if a failed flee also gave an attack of opportunity? What do we think would change about combat?

It's my understanding that this is what currently happens, or maybe it's a successful flee.

In my experience, attacks of opportunity trigger under:

Successful flees
Picking something up
Successful flees that fail in the next round, ie, too big for that exit, or too tired to move.

A raw failed flee does not trigger a slap to the booty, if my experience is any evidence.

[stark]

I think flee is just fine, of course I don't run around pking a bunch of frightened grebbers that flee head over heels either...but I don't like the idea of someone adding more lag to flee when me and that crazy tumbling carru is nipping my ass or that mountain high spider is spinning webs all around me.

[Armaddict]

Given that I have died from instantly fleeing from a much stronger opponent, I don't think adding a delay is necessary.

We've made it so that fleeing grants free attacks, and I think that serves as a good balancing factor without the need to push it further.  I much prefer that if you plan on killing someone, you should plan on a process that includes more than using kill.  You may be able to do it with just kill, depending on circumstances, but you should plan on more.

[John]

Nevermind.

[Dresan]

The delay I have in mind would be short.

If something attacks you, you can flee quick enough to avoid even the first attack.  The delay would just be long enough to prevent this from happening. It will just guarantee that the attacker will get a round of attacks before the victim flees. It would be shorter than the delay you get when you 'type kill <something>'. Certainly lower than bash, or charge.

I like the idea of a bigger delay on a fail flee, however flee begins to be unreliable is when you are in a room with less than two exits and you have low or no skill...like the sparring room of a clan. It would effectively prevent spam fleeing, so I'd still be all for it. 

This change would make things a bit more dangerous, but not replace locked room as one of the few ways to secure a kill.

[Armaddict]

If something attacks you, you can flee quick enough to avoid even the first attack.

Uh.  Can you elaborate on this?

[Namino]

If something attacks you, you can flee quick enough to avoid even the first attack.

Uh.  Can you elaborate on this?

Yeah... the kill command comes with an automatic first round of combat. If they attack you some other way, like with a kick or a bash that misses, then maybe you can get away, but attacking someone always nets you at least one round of combat. The issue for me is, even if you reel someone in that round of combat, spam fleeing will kick in and get them away before you get another round, unless you're lucky with really high agility.

I'm not saying escape should be impossible or even difficult, but right now, it's just... well, unless they're a HG or a monstrously experienced fighter who can one-shot you on an attack of opportunity, fleeing is really safe right now.

[evilcabbage]

try etwoing a good club and see how that spam flee works.

[Hauwke]

You really cant avoid the first hit, at least not once it attacks you. Unless of course you mean to say "Their attack misses." Which is possible, the first attack not going through is an impossibility.

[Dresan]

While you do get  first attack when you type kill <victim> sometimes you get a noticeable delay between the time you attack a person, and the time yo actually perform that first attack. This doesn't always occur, but it does happen. Very recently the same thing happened when  an animal attack me. I've gotten the message X attacks you but I was still move to the next room before it could land the first attack.

I am not quite sure why this occurs; lag or maybe agility of the victim being high. It is a bit random, since that first attack can happen instantly too.

Many moons ago I was trying to kill someone and I was managing to successfully chasing them. I was getting the message that I attacked them. I was getting lagged from the kill command, but they would run before I would perform a single attack.  I remember wishing up about it, I didn't know what was going on and the person was run/fleeing so quick that I thought they had triggers that when fired off when they got the message I had attacked them.

At the end I suppose I feel I am one of those people that feel its a little to easy to escape. I am okay if someone invests some effort in getting that good at escaping, through skill or preparation. Otherwise RP should be more tempting option then fleeing with low or no skill in it.

[Hauwke]

The particular thing you are talking about, can quite easily be replicated using kagors and stuff that like to attack from stealth, the first attack from stealth does not appear to actually trigger combat between both parties, just the attacker, while the victim is left in a state of limbo where they can do whatever they want.

[Inks]

Hawke is completely correct on this. The thing you are talking about is animals attacking from stealth while you are moving, I am pretty sure.


I am all for making the wilderness more obnoxious though, bring on the lizards that spit blinding poison in your face.

[Hauwke]

The specifics are, you are not considered 'in combat' until the stealthed critters next attack, or, you attack the critter.

If you put your position into your prompt it will show this as being the case.