kill command: Instant attack or no?

[Harmless]

Gah. One last post to clarify my threat to ragequit (yeah, like I can do that after being on this game for so many years. Just take it as an expression of rage.)

But, I Disagree, staff do not appear to be on top of it, yet. Staff and player complaints were just filed for them to read.

Reasons for wanting to peace out are as much about the community's apparent total blasé over this shit, shown i this thread, as well as the griefer himself. I get to be told that I am saying "stupid shit" in this thread because I find the code that allows fresh out the box trolls to do this to be garbage and wanted to discuss ways it can be improved.

I am not asking for game balance, RP restrictions, etc. I am asking for intensive RP which by definition is code driven and roleplay driven, but not purely code driven.

See and read the contents of my posts, I really have said it all now.

[valeria]

I don't think that disagreeing with your idea is the same as saying that you're saying stupid shit. And I'm not sure that disagreement with your proposed solution is a blasé attitude. If you had brought it up at a different time you probably still would have seen disagreement because 10 people can look at a problem and not all agree on what the specific solution should be.

I do think people are sensitive to wanting to react to one guy who is probably going to get bored before too long. I know I certainly am. Is combat approach a good idea on its own? Maybe. But you can't expect people not to think of the context it's being raised in, and being leery of being reactionary.

There are clear indications that a certain sort of person is being monitored and shut down when they try to start things. I can't go into details, but the change has been apparent if you've been around for the incidents.

[azuriolinist]

I'm actually glad you've brought this discussion up, because the combat code could definitely see some improvement -- especially if your argument is for intensive roleplay. I still don't believe tacking on a delay to the kill command is the way to go about it. When it becomes reflex for players to leave the room when The tall, muscular man approaches you. is printed on the screen, is that any more conducive to roleplay than the way the kill command works now?

The way the combat code works now, it's so fast-paced it's difficult to shoot out an emote, much less roleplay successfully once combat is initiated. More so in high pressure situations. I think the entire thing needs an overhaul if we want to encourage roleplay during combat.

That said, to address this specific situation, maybe the way defense works when unarmed could be changed. I've always been iffy with the way it currently works. When a PC is unarmed versus an armed opponent (and on equal footing, let's say), it's as if they're suddenly fighting drunk and running headlong into each swing. But armed, that same PC starts dodging blows left and right.

Now, I could see the reach of a weapon being a factor in this situation. But being unarmed still gives an overly large hit to a PC's defense, imo. What if the hit on defense when unarmed was lowered just enough so that an unarmed PC would generally not be immediately hit with reeling blows (in a fairly skill-equal situation), but also enough so that being unarmed remains a risk? A realistic risk.

[puella]

That said, to address this specific situation, maybe the way defense works when unarmed could be changed. I've always been iffy with the way it currently works. When a PC is unarmed versus an armed opponent (and on equal footing, let's say), it's as if they're suddenly fighting drunk and running headlong into each swing. But armed, that same PC starts dodging blows left and right.

Now, I could see the reach of a weapon being a factor in this situation. But being unarmed still gives an overly large hit to a PC's defense, imo. What if the hit on defense when unarmed was lowered just enough so that an unarmed PC would generally not be immediately hit with reeling blows (in a fairly skill-equal situation), but also enough so that being unarmed remains a risk? A realistic risk.

I like this idea; one thing unrelated that it would address (which is more a pet peeve of mine) is that the way unarmed combat works sort of forces us to always have 'weapons out' when we are outside the gates.  If being unarmed weren't so devastating, we could actually go around with weapons sheathed and draw them when we encounter an enemy, rather than riding around with them out already.

[CodeMaster]

My post in this thread was probably a little insensitive because I didn't know all the details.

If you look at Armageddon through the game theory lens, with a goal of "winning" and surviving, one dominant strategy is to play an invisible magicker or a templar.  Nuff said.

Another dominant strategy is "alwayshide" - sneak around solo with your weapons out, use the Way to communicate with everyone, and asymmetrically pk your enemies (and their friends) whenever the naive fools deign to come out of hiding to help a newbie or sit "alone" in the Gaj for a few minutes.  Ha, ha, ha...

And the third dominant strategy, if all you care about is griefing with a brand new character, is to roll a dwarf warrior with prioritized strength and attack anyone trying to play "normal people" who walk down the street without leaping from shadow to shadow, and who are stupid enough to sheath their bastard swords so they can have a drink.

Seeing how defenseless they are, the players playing "normal people" are incentivized to adopt the alwayshide strategy (it is the most accessible/acceptable dominant strategy), and we end up in a setting where it's harder to tell stories because everyone's hiding or magick.

I've been annoyed by the alwayshide style of play, which is super easy now that you can move around while hidden, but I have to admit I've also been complicit.

Fortunately, when I look at the new classes, I feel like they're addressing this problem by requiring you to team up to fully execute the alwayshide strategy I describe above.  (And Vox, if you're reading this, that's why I think it's not necessarily bad that assassins were dissembled the way they were; but I know we'll both miss them.)  If you're teaming up with and reliant on other PCs, you're telling better stories.

But I think the griefer strategy needs to be looked at, hence this thread.  And I think the best thing we can do is to reduce combat effectiveness of brand new/low-skilled characters.  This would force the new character to put in a couple hours of playtime -- which would, incidentally, be quickly rewarded with a more powerful character.  It's not a solution but it's a stop-gap and in the meantime you have a "contributing" character doing stuff in the world

[Miradus]

Nice post and all, but the 20 year old code behind >kill is basic as fuck, I am going to stick to my guns with that one and bow out of the thread, enjoy your shitty RP, if this goes on too long I am just gonna check out from the MUD entirely because I didn't sign on to RPI for this shit, maybe go and read a good book or some shit.

Will file staff and player complaints on my way out, fwiw.

Btw, ironically yes, yesterday I had another dose of good RP with the game but sure as fuck none of it revolved around mindless PK bullshit, not at all.

Fix basic ass code, make >backstab and >strategy work again. GG griefers

What exactly is it with the players of this game that so many of you think you're so important to keeping this shit rolling along that people will immediately capitulate to your demands if you threaten to quit the game?

I've quit the game like three times now and each time I came back, guess what, it was still here.

[BrainySmurf]

Combat code in Armageddon is insanely clunky. There's a million things  that absolutely need to be looked at and have sat on the back burner for decades. I could write a list here as long as my arm about all of them. If anyone at all gives a care about my opinion on such matters, that is something for a different thread.

Someone's already mentioned it, but the issue with this incident is not the instantaneous nature of kill. I would argue a more productive approach would be to rework how unarmed combat works. Specifically:

Reduce the penalty for being unarmed by a large margin (not entirely) so that it is a noticeable but modest penalty.
Balanced by: give the recipient of a disarm an after-attack delay so they can't re-equip and have to fight a couple of rounds at a modest penalty.

Also worth examining is the affect of stun. Your ability to eat your opponent's stun in this game is a very bimodal impact. Either it's negligible because you're fighting someone armed who has training and only lightly hitting them, or you got them unarmed and sitting and you devour their entire st pool in one or two hits. Personally I think we should reduce stun damage of blunt weapons, and compensate by making reel code actually delay your opponent by a larger margin. This is especially useful in my opinion because you cannot train your stun pool -- that is dictated by your stats -- but you can gradually increase your reel resistances, allowing a diligent person to train for the consequences of getting clobbered unexpectedly by a club.

Either or both of those solutions would address the issue at hand. Putting a pre-delay on kill, however, would just make combat even more clunky and make certain already difficult to manage gimmicks totally horrible to manage.

[MeTekillot]

I mean, in the interest of realism, even if you're a hard motherfucker, if you go bare-handed at someone with a 3 foot long sword, you're going to have a really, really, really bad time, unless their leg is broken or you're on speed, or something.

[BrainySmurf]

Likewise in the interest of realism, one doesn't forget how to move their feet (dodge) because they don't have a sword in their hand. Yet the unarmed penalty strongly affects your ability to dodge. Obviously going unarmed against an armed opponent will end in your defeat, if only because they can hurt you and you're bouncing off of them. It's the defensive penalties that seem particularly outrageous when we vacillate between "I have a sword in my hand and I can dodge you endlessly" to "I do not have a sword and now you cannot miss me at all."

[Armaddict]

If it -isn't- a knee jerk reaction, and it's just a thought out reason for why combat should be slowed down to allow people to not get ambushed/surprised and die, then it's been brought up in various approach threads that you can search for.  Some of them had huge lists of pros and cons if I recall, and some really innovative ideas on how to 'spread out' rooms as far as the instant closer.  In the end, though, it has generally been an unfavorable reception.

I don't think that unfavorable reception should change merely because someone can fall back on the 'loss of story' attack once again.  It's an attack that intentionally tries to infer that people who argue with it are against roleplay, which is entirely untrue, and I've posted various times about how the overuse of the 'loss of story' attacks equating with 'I don't agree with my death' instances was something easily ignored at this point.

Also worth examining is the affect of stun. Your ability to eat your opponent's stun in this game is a very bimodal impact. Either it's negligible because you're fighting someone armed who has training and only lightly hitting them, or you got them unarmed and sitting and you devour their entire st pool in one or two hits. Personally I think we should reduce stun damage of blunt weapons, and compensate by making reel code actually delay your opponent by a larger margin. This is especially useful in my opinion because you cannot train your stun pool -- that is dictated by your stats -- but you can gradually increase your reel resistances, allowing a diligent person to train for the consequences of getting clobbered unexpectedly by a club.

This, however, is a new idea that has not been presented in some time that is not a huge mechanic disruption; re-examining the impacts on stun.  Some testing could be done on staff side to see if there are suitable tweaks to be made that help in the rare grief situation, without simultaneously diluting the ambush situation.

[Hauwke]

Despite what movies tell people, the vast majority of fights are going to be won by the larger individual. Why? A ton of reasons.

1: Wrist strength. It takes that to parry a blow, and every time you parry its going to sap a little energy from your arm. Having a stronger wrist means you have to put slightly less of yourself into it.

2: Reach. There is a huge difference between the arm belonging to that 5'6 guy and that 6'6 guy. It might not look like much, but it is the difference between having to take a large step forward to swat that guy in the face, and a regular step. Big guy go further.

3 The ability to 'absorb' damage. Now this one is tricky, but generally the larger individual is going to have more fat and muscle on their body by virtue of being larger. Historical records have shown that gladiators, the prized ones at least, were overfed to make them fat. Guess why? So that when they inevitably got slashed in the gut, they didnt actually die from it. Same concept but on a slightly smaller scale.

4: Stronger arms. The simply ability to overpower another person is invaluable.


The only one of these that Zalanthan dwarves lack, is reach. But that can be easily fixed by giving them a longer sword.

As for realism when it comes to being unable to dodge when unarmed, yeah that one is kind of confusing and I cannot really explain that one other than dodging is hard as fuck and super tiring. Try it some time, get a friend to swing a stick at you and try to not get whooped with it.

[Harmless]

fatigue mid-combat does not seem to be simulated at all, either. there are move points, spent when you use certain skills or abilities. however, it appears you can fight indefinitely without using skills, retain your move points, and not seem to get tired.

I emote being tired, sure, but codedly, I do not think I am getting penalized for a prolonged fight.

If dodging takes energy, then dodging (+/- parrying, blocking, attacking, etc) should be most likely to succeed early in a fight. later in the fight, dodging should get harder and harder with some other element of fatigue coded in.

maybe fatigue should just be coded with move points, and a little move is lost when you do certain common combat things. maybe some other form of fatigue during combat should be tracked independent of move points. Maybe it already is, in the nebulous "balance" feature that I hear exists. Either way, it doesn't seem to have a very sensical implementation.

if people don't like a change to dodging/fatigue that makes it harder to ambush-kill before they flee, then implement a "hamstring" command and give it to warriors and assassin/thug types. It'll greatly penalize dodging. You can use it as a opener and then your next few attacks will be very likely to destroy your unarmed opponent who may rely on agility and dodging to survive.

BTW, I am glad that people are in the mood to discuss combat revamping again instead of just falling on "knee-jerk knee-jerk."

[azuriolinist]

I emote being tired, sure, but codedly, I do not think I am getting penalized for a prolonged fight.

From what I've seen, no, there are no coded penalties unless you're in an unfavorable situation, from what I recall.

I like the idea of implementing fatigue in combat. And Hauwke, I agree. Being unarmed might speed up the process, but regardless of whether or not you're armed, dodging is draining.

[SuchDragonWow]

It doesn't seem necessary.  I don't see what it adds to the game.  Maybe a pre-delay where both parties can do nothing codedly except emote.  I'd be fine with that, but if it doesn't involve something to do with adding more avenues for roleplay, then it's not needed, imo.

[Vox]

Edited for trolling. - Delirium

While I'm not a fan of additional code being added I do think the combat code can continue to be updated(hack and riposte are good examples of that slowly starting actually), but your suggestion of a delay before combat even begins is just nonsense in my opinion so I stated why with a hope that we can bridge the short-comings and 'basic as fuck'ness (as you say) in certain areas of the code with actual RP of our own regardless.

[Harmless]

Vox, while I deserve your snark for the emo-tastic shit I was posting and don't deny that, the reason I replied that way to you was because your reply to all of the discussion could be summarized as "you died, you're upset, get over it, the game's harsh." Not useful, not accurate, and not discussing the topic, but thanks anyway for your two sids.

[Vox]

Vox, while I deserve your snark for the emo-tastic shit I was posting and don't deny that, the reason I replied that way to you was because your reply to all of the discussion could be summarized as "you died, you're upset, get over it, the game's harsh." Not useful, not accurate, and not discussing the topic, but thanks anyway for your two sids.

That feels like a gross oversimplification of my post but I get it. Please know I wasn't trying to be dismissive, just sharing my honest opinion on the matter.

[najdorf]

It has been mentioned either here, or somewhere else before, but the real cool thing would be a new reaction skill.

skill react_combat:

If attacked while unarmed, the skilled defender gets a chance to reach to their weapon (closest worn on the belt) and draw it. Being observant (watching the target) and agile improves your chances.

success should be based on a formula including attackers agility, sneak/hide status, offense, etc. and defenders agility, watch, defense, etc.

and should be controlled with a toggle. (not always you want this to happen, right?)

[Vox]

It has been mentioned either here, or somewhere else before, but the real cool thing would be a new reaction skill.

skill react_combat:

If attacked while unarmed, the skilled defender gets a chance to reach to their weapon (closest worn on the belt) and draw it. Being observant (watching the target) and agile improves your chances.

success should be based on a formula including attackers agility, sneak/hide status, offense, etc. and defenders agility, watch, defense, etc.

and should be controlled with a toggle. (not always you want this to happen, right?)

This is fucking brilliant. +1

[BrainySmurf]

The gruff Byn Sergeant says, in Sirihish, "We're going to be training your reactions from now on, recruits. Which means I'm going to jump one of you at random at every meal."

[Feco]

It has been mentioned either here, or somewhere else before, but the real cool thing would be a new reaction skill.

skill react_combat:

If attacked while unarmed, the skilled defender gets a chance to reach to their weapon (closest worn on the belt) and draw it. Being observant (watching the target) and agile improves your chances.

success should be based on a formula including attackers agility, sneak/hide status, offense, etc. and defenders agility, watch, defense, etc.

and should be controlled with a toggle. (not always you want this to happen, right?)

+1

But maybe we call it quick draw, or combat reflexes.

[Delirium]

It has been mentioned either here, or somewhere else before, but the real cool thing would be a new reaction skill.

skill react_combat:

If attacked while unarmed, the skilled defender gets a chance to reach to their weapon (closest worn on the belt) and draw it. Being observant (watching the target) and agile improves your chances.

success should be based on a formula including attackers agility, sneak/hide status, offense, etc. and defenders agility, watch, defense, etc.

and should be controlled with a toggle. (not always you want this to happen, right?)

+1

But maybe we call it quick draw, or combat reflexes.

The gruff Byn Sergeant says, in Sirihish, "We're going to be training your reactions from now on, recruits. Which means I'm going to jump one of you at random at every meal."

I love everything about this.

[BrainySmurf]

I like it. Though the only drawback is it needs to have a nosave toggle flag or you're going to end up stabbing people a lot during rough circle or if you emoted equipping your sparring weapon but forgot to actually pick it up and the command defaults to the pair of heramide and terradin laced knives on your belt.

[Rumor]

I like it. Though the only drawback is it needs to have a nosave toggle flag or you're going to end up stabbing people a lot during rough circle or if you emoted equipping your sparring weapon but forgot to actually pick it up and the command defaults to the pair of heramide and terradin laced knives on your belt.

The toggle is suggested in the post.

[BrainySmurf]

Sure is.