On current combat problems

Gurn

Before I begin, a foreword. In order to keep this thread on topic and with reasonable discussion, posts should be marked at the beginning with a bolded main point, and potential italicized lesser points. Bold points should be the main thing being addressed, rather than spending an entire page on arguing a miniscule point or example, like it usually happens.

That said, let's begin.

In my opinion, there are currently a few generalized main problems with combat.

A) Combat has no middle ground. You have basic attacks, and then you're largely ineffective until you've entered the top tier.

When you're attempting to learn combat, you either manage to outpace their healing, or you don't. This is especially true in the case of affliction professions. A hunter or a sabreknight who is trying to afflict their opponent to death will either outpace their healing with proper tracking and afflicts, or they won't, putting them at a very near all or nothing sort of thing. This can be true of damage professions as well, since a certain damage output is required to outpace healing-- It can be argued higher tier damage professions are more difficult, as trying to outdamage an artifact healer can usually only be done by buying more artifacts.

The most frustrating part of learning combat is the lack of progress.

It's very difficult to see progression in combat. Once you get your basic little system set up, you can easily destroy anyone who doesn't really have anything/are low level. Suddenly excited, you go out and try fighting more experienced players...

Just to get completely and utterly crushed. You work and you work and you work, but you either get to that scripting and combat level where you can outpace Garrynbot afflictions or health sipping, or you sort of flounder around at the level where you can kinda kill people who don't know what they're doing(applying mostly to damage professions) and you can't do anything to any reasonably higher tier people. The artifact buy-in gap over the years has caused this to become even more difficult. You say fast, diadem, and surcoat is what we should balance around? That's great for you, who has all that. Unfortunately, the smaller players who want to grow can't afford all that, especially with the credit market where it is.

All this discourages new players from entering combat, as the standards being set are being set by people who likely have half a decade or more of experience and thousands of dollars worth in artifacts. Trying to fight in a middle ground where you have tri-trans but nothing else is near impossible and highly discouraging.

The learning buy-in of the game is extraordinarily high.

Suppose I'm a new player who's come to the game. I have no experience with MUDs, though I may have some experience with RPGs. Not only do I now have to learn how to play Imperian and the game's unique world, I have to learn how to play and navigate through an MUD, I probably have to go learn a new scripting language just to fight!

Having a new player need to learn Lua or Zscript just to do basic combat makes the game much more difficult to access.

The game is a ton better and easier to play than when I first started(thanks to the awesome admins working at making newbie material more friendly!), but the need to script to do anything more than ATTACK is scary and discouraging.

C) Team combat put affliction professions below their optimal effectiveness.

In team combat, there's one objective: Outdamage the enemy team. There's no sense in out-afflicting the enemy at all; this is because all damage professions are going for the same kill method. If there are quite a few different professions, but their main method of killing is all damage, then they may as well be the same effective profession. In other words:

Damage professions use 0 health to kill, with their trasncendent abilities supplmenting, rather than being the reason for the kill.

Affliction professions use unique, specific conditions to create a special instant kill. Most attacks by another profession does not contribute to the kill, or otherwise require extremely good coordination.

This is one of the reasons why demonic has it so hard in team combat. Most of their professions go for different things-- Giving your opponents attunement isn't going to help bring vivisect around any faster. Affliction professions are arguably the most powerful sort in 1v1, but that doesn't happen much besides in the arena. As such, zergling rushes become more or less the only way to win team fights. A good afflicter isn't going to manage much if it takes a minute to set up her or his unique kill if the enemy team can focus fire to bring someone down in mere seconds. It's easy to use "attack" or a simple pre-defined attack macro, but a lot harder to coordinate afflictions for the special kills.

D) Zerglings

Plain and simple. 

The more people, the more damage/affliction output. 

It's often not "Who do we have that's good?" but rather, "How many people do we have, and can we mass more zerglings than them?"

E) I can count the number of people who talk about combat(or really, anything) regularly on my fingers.

The forums are a terrible place to get input about the game in any way, shape, or form. Sure, there are experienced players talking on the forums, but it's only a small handful that don't in any way represent the game's playerbase. The forum's enviornment and reputation has made it a place where many people have tried to talk and input ideas but have been laughed at and jeered and shooed away without any new ideas taking root. We have the opinions and ideas from the elitist forum community, but what about the rest of the game? There are valid points and new ideas that can come from a significantly larger pool of people than the ones that frequent the forums.

Gurn

PROPOSED SOLUTIONS:

A) Combat has no middle ground. You have basic attacks, and then you're largely ineffective until you've entered the top tier.

The learning buy-in of the game is extraordinarily high.

A two-in-one solution, and perhaps a difficult one to implement, but...

In most standard graphical RPGs, there is a simple button system and auto-attack. Something similar could be implemented per profession to Imperian.

We'll take Runeguard for example. The attacks would be mappable by config to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc, etc, with a standard newbie set in use. Think of these as in-game aliases that would automatically be added onto the balance queue.

1: dsl target <toxin> <toxin> (perhaps default toxins are set)

2: raze target

3: flare <rune> at target

4: engage

5: razeslash target <toxin>

6: dsl target <toxin> <toxin>/flare <rune> at target

These options would be unlocked when you learn the ability. When the ability is learned, the player is told which number it's automatically mapped to.

"But those are just simple aliases", you say, "They're easy to learn and you can easily make them yourself!"

True. You'd think so, but we're all seasoned and understand these sort of things now. Back when I first started, trying to create an alias, much less figure out variables, chained statements and if/else was a nightmare. Saving newbies an extra step of figuring out what the hell an alias is can really get them to get into the game. 

The standardized set of original actions allows experienced players to teach about how the GAME works without first having to teach a scripting class.

Let's look at this from a newbie's point of view. I just got razeslash in Chivalry, and Sowulu in runelore.

You have learned Razeslash in Chivalry!

This ability can be used by entering "5".

I can then use CONFIG ATTACKS 5 <attack> [option]/<attack> [option]

I now have a quick access to this ability and can use it as soon as I get it, without any coding. While this seems like a small change, what it does is allow more experienced players to give lessons in the actual game combat mechanics without having to first give a quick and dirty scripting lesson. The newbie player can dive right into using abilities without having to first figure out exactly how the command and syntax works. Additionally, giving a good standard set of these numbers(or perhaps giving the option to switch between several standardized sets) could allow someone, even a more veteran player, to get the feel of what an offence could be. The argument could be made, of course, that "even offences would be automated by Garrynbot". The solution is to adjust what the sets can do. If I have a standardized set of 10 that only goes "dsl target toxin toxin", it won't do me much good unless I add things to it!

Bonus: This could be an easy way to give mobile app users a way to fight without having to set up buttons on the device.

C) Team combat put affliction professions below their optimal effectiveness.

Perhaps allow for a generalized affliction kill in a general skillset, such as Toxins. 

After X amount of afflictions are applied for X amount of time(ballpartk, 10 afflictions stuck for at least 10 seconds), a player may execute an instant kill, or a channeled instant kill that's faster for every affliction above X number.

While this wouldn't completely alleviate the issue, it would certainly provide an alternate form of killing. Gearing teams for afflictiontrain vs damagetrain would make the game interesting, I think.

D) Zerlings

Introduce hellbats, banelings, and high templars. 

Well, no, I don't have any really good ideas for this one. AOE attacks that affect an entire room will obviously just work in favour of the zerg again, as they can field more AOE. More team scatter abilities, I think, might help. The ability to scatter BOTH teams at the same time forces people to either learn to group up again quickly or to fight people in lesser number-- Either way, it gives smaller numbers a better chance if they have better people.

Iniar

Gurn said:

The learning buy-in of the game is extraordinarily high.

We'll take Runeguard for example. The attacks would be mappable by config to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc, etc, with a standard newbie set in use. Think of these as in-game aliases that would automatically be added onto the balance queue.

1: dsl target <toxin> <toxin> (perhaps default toxins are set)

2: raze target

3: flare <rune> at target

4: engage

5: razeslash target <toxin>

6: dsl target <toxin> <toxin>/flare <rune> at target

I really like this.

D) Zerglings

Numerical superiority should not be punished.

However, its advantage should be whittled.

a) limit the amount of total follows to 5 per leader - this way, you can't drop team A with 18 members on to team B with 4 members. It'll be more of team A(i) arriving quicker, team B getting a few hits in, team A(ii) landing, team B has an oshi moment and scrambles. It maintains numerical superiority while allowing team B to be more mobile/escapist/guerilla.

b) more team scatter will bring movement into a more central part of combat

Galt

I think what's stopped me getting back in to Imp is the steady powercreep that was already occurring around the time of the god-death event. 

All the reworked classes seem to be able to do everything. Walls? No problem! Your class has a skill to blink past them. Range? Here, have a vaugely similar ranged attack to the other reworked classes! This removes the fun from multiclassing, somewhat, but it also serves to make things rather boring. 

There's also the counter-skill creep. This has taken place over a far longer timespan than the problem mentioned above. The best way to show this is walls: Icewall was impossible to remove, so most classes gained a way to do so. Stonewall supplanted it, and then counters to that began to spread. Next up came shardwalls and their counters.

This has also spread to artifacts - Sanctified Aegis, Stonewall artifact and others have gone from auction rarities to normal artifacts. It's getting a little ridiculous. 

I might be mistaken, but it feels like power creep has become a real issue with Imperian that only seems to be getting worse with the class reworks. Whilst many classes needed overhauls, the result - Swiss-army-knife do-alls that all feel like reskins of either direct damage/timebomb mechanics - isn't particularly fun, because if you're still playing a legacy/old class, you're nowhere near as versatile or effective as a reworked class.

As I said, I might be wrong, as I've not been active in some time. Correct me if this is the case. 

Iluv

I think Shardfalls, Obelisks and Teamffas are the middle ground for combat here. What I'd like to see is a revamp of PK rating system and arena events. There should be tiered ladder which resets every 3 months (Shorter?) and the current top participents recieve cosmetic rewards. How will the tiers be organized? Set it so that if you are above a certain might/artifact level you cannot enter lower tiers but people below the bar can always choose to opt into higher tiers or their own.

Ahkan

@Galt

-You can't stop power creep. The only thing you can really do is tone down the effectiveness of artifacts for great irony.

-Yes there are a lot of wall. Luckily, there's shard disrupt which effectively nerfed/outclassed every wall breaking mechanic ever. You get this for joining a city.

-The new classes are good because they're designed in the age of Garrynbot and have adapted to beat it.

-If you're 'good' you can still be 'good' in a legacy class

@Gurn

A) There's very little middle ground because the game has changed. There's no real impetus for people to get after it outside of shard falls. Raids are handled by people astronomically out of the league of a new pker. There is nothing in this game to motivate or really justify pking outside of shardfalls for a level 50-80. If someone does try, they get flagged as a griefer and get a visit from a high tier bot.

We've lowered the buy in a lot. I think there are some people that want to classlead focus/purge blood to work at inept and get faster as you rank up. If you're looking at it from a "I must  buy credits immediately" perspective, the buy in is steep. What a lot of people fail to realize is how awesome the iron elite is. The membership program is absolutely amazing for building up a character over time. At the end of the day, you can play Imperian and still have a hell of a lot of fun without artifacts.

C) Team combat raises the bar for affliction classes. The skill requirement and 'team work' requirement is much, much higher for affliction offenses. You don't want to duplicate afflictions and you don't want to go for an instakill that isn't set up yet. The damage team has a 'leader' who calls targets and they just has to mash 'attack ahkan' and hope for the best. Affliction squads have to have good target priority, the ability to track the afflictions of 1-8 people and the ability to choose what skill needs to be used when to put people away.

D) You won't avoid the production zerglings. You just have to support the zerg while they learn to pk. New people want to get involved in combat. AM is really good for this because every class is high con, high strength, facerolling 'attack ahkan' mode. They can get involved with a low investment of money and coding. We're even starting to see some non-comms in Demonic get involved in shard falls. They have 0 coding experience and 0 pk experience. You know what they get put on? Zerg duty. Do this simple task that makes life easier for your teammate. The fun thing to watch is to see them start to build their own systems and helping them go from 'dustthrow choke ahkan' to "How do I use marks", "What afflictions can I give with mixing" and then you see them start to alternate their attacks based on how the team is fighting.

E) Not everyone wants to talk about combat all the time. Some people shardfall and they're :efforted: out. It's not really good to force someone into pk theory when they don't want to do it. The best you can do is just be patient and wait for when they approach you. Then your job is "don't drown this person in information."

It would be really cool if you could slowly start to insert some 'pk' things that make life easier for new people. The problem is still going to be learning what to do when, which has always dissuaded people from getting into pk. While newbie 1823 is trying to remember to if it's raze target or target raze, they just got 3 afflictions and 100 damage....or probably got knocked unconscious.

Ambrose

As a new player, I second everything Ahkan said. My frustrations have been more centered on the lack of ability to transition in learning. I'm so far out of my league right now that it's actually kind of amusing to watch, though it does get old. And while gbot keeps me alive (pretty dang well, I might add), it's does get really hard to learn what you need to look for/do when you are really steamrolled by most anyone and combat spam makes it really hard to even see what's going on half the time, much less make any critically thought out decisions on what I should be doing with an arsenal of abilities that I am only partly beginning to understand. Part of this gets help with your alias solution. I roll mudlet, because I'm a hipster Mac user... so I can't just pick up Azefel's system (only on cMUD correct?). And since I don't have the coding experience to set up any sort of system, I am pretty much reduced to having an alias attack my target variable.

All of this means that I am resigned either to AM or druid. Which leads to the host of other problems that people already gripe about in the class type dispersion and player distribution.

Septus

Not sure where you're coming from with the legacy class thing. I'm assuming this would be dk/templar/monk/malignist. All of these classes are seriously strong (malignist requires a bit more work in teams and a higher initial skill cap, but its still powerful after the last classleads round). I'd put fast monk down as possibly the most op one v one class in terms of you-will-die-if-I-prep-two-limbs, and kaido speaks for itself in teams. Then you have knight which is the class that does everything at least decently.

They might not get some of the shiny new toys recent class releases have, but you can be sure no new class is getting stuff like enfeeble/banish/defend through a beta either.

Iluv

Ambrose said:

As a new player, I second everything Ahkan said. My frustrations have been more centered on the lack of ability to transition in learning. I'm so far out of my league right now that it's actually kind of amusing to watch, though it does get old. And while gbot keeps me alive (pretty dang well, I might add), it's does get really hard to learn what you need to look for/do when you are really steamrolled by most anyone and combat spam makes it really hard to even see what's going on half the time, much less make any critically thought out decisions on what I should be doing with an arsenal of abilities that I am only partly beginning to understand. Part of this gets help with your alias solution. I roll mudlet, because I'm a hipster Mac user... so I can't just pick up Azefel's system (only on cMUD correct?). And since I don't have the coding experience to set up any sort of system, I am pretty much reduced to having an alias attack my target variable.

All of this means that I am resigned either to AM or druid. Which leads to the host of other problems that people already gripe about in the class type dispersion and player distribution.

What you need to do after every fight is scroll back and analyze what happened and make highlights and aliases for situations where you need them. If you are on Mudlet, systems for Diab, Wytch, Summoner and Assassin are available.

Sarrius

The only way to get good is to start learning. The reason there is no appreciable notice of learning or denotement of 'getting better' is because we have effectively removed everything to fight over. If you do see a midbie vs midbie fight, the winner gets a brand new throat wound courtesy of Azefel/Sarrius/Septus/Iluv/Kryss/whoever else. The reason for that is the same: a lot of 'top end' has vanished and those inhabitants are starved for reasons or activity.

Gurn

Ahkan said:

A) There's very little middle ground because the game has changed. There's no real impetus for people to get after it outside of shard falls. Raids are handled by people astronomically out of the league of a new pker. There is nothing in this game to motivate or really justify pking outside of shardfalls for a level 50-80. If someone does try, they get flagged as a griefer and get a visit from a high tier bot.

This is absolutely true, and is much of what discourages players. There seems to be no point to PK. A tiered resetting combat system, like Iluv suggested, could help alleviate that, but there's still little motivation behind it.


We've lowered the buy in a lot. I think there are some people that want to classlead focus/purge blood to work at inept and get faster as you rank up. If you're looking at it from a "I must  buy credits immediately" perspective, the buy in is steep. What a lot of people fail to realize is how awesome the iron elite is. The membership program is absolutely amazing for building up a character over time. At the end of the day, you can play Imperian and still have a hell of a lot of fun without artifacts.

This is true, but the buy in isn't what I was talking about. It's not the monetary buy-in I'm concerned about, but the mental and intellectual buy-in of having to learn everything. The system I suggested would help people get used to that, and also help with some of the syntax issues which plagues many newbies(as mentioned with your 'raze target' and 'target raze' example.)

C) Affliction combat

This is true, but the amount of variables you have to track even in 1v1 is ridiculous. At a certain point, I think a generalized affliction kill available to all players would help group abilities.

D) On zerglings

Having more room burst afflictions that send everyone flying would help team fights without penalizing number advantage, simply giving the smaller team a chance to group up faster, if they can. It would promote learning some independence as well, since it wouldn't be enough to just follow and mash F1 against triggered target anymore.

E) Not just combat, but game input in general

I forgot to address this. Some problems with the forums involve simply knowing who's posting. If a separate, anonymous forum were created to allow people to speak with only their ideas, rather than their names considered, it would significantly help things. It would still require login with your game name, just as here, as to allow admins to track abuse, if it were to happen.

I'm hoping this sort of thing would loosen the kind of fear associated with the forums and encourage a greater population of the game to want to contribute ideas of any shape or form.

1) Mostly, I'm still hoping something like my proposed suggestion could be created, which hopefully isn't too difficult.

I'm sure the playerbase would be glad to help in creating the standardized sets and the like to help newbies and people to start combat.

Sarrius

It is impossible for me to disagree any more than I do with some of the points you present in this thread, Gurn. Making beginning an offense is perfectly acceptable and noble, but let's not muddy that point with the rest of this stuff.

While population imbalance is surely an issue in Imperian, I believe it is a symptom and not the disease itself. The leading cause of population imbalance is the fact that other sides aren't as appealing. This might be due to attitude, classes, people in the circle, leaders of the circle, visible roleplay, etc. Imbalance is indicative of something or some things being wrong. You cannot say 'zerglings' are a problem, because that is a broad (not to mention disingenuous) statement. Never would I think I'd see the day that people claim TOO MUCH participation is an issue. It isn't. It is a symptom, if anything at all.

Anonymously posting feedback is a terrible idea. We are all adults or pseudoadults capable of sharing our opinions and input without some kind of unnecessary shroud veiling who is who. Let's not beat around the bush here - if you have input to get across to the administration, you can do so and then safely ignore any replies you perceive as venomous. Most of the 'fear' in the forums is perpetuated from one circle spending their time griping unrealistically about somebody in another circle, demonizing fellow human beings who just happen to present a point in a way found to be less appealing. It is all a ton of nonsense.

Iluv

When AM members continually team with Magick when they are outnumbered, I hardly think they joined the circle because of "RP", better leaders or attitude.

Sarrius

Something about that statement smells a lot like farms. Maybe excrement or straw. Could you perhaps be mad at opportunism or most Aspect conflicts ever?

My point is this: Magick at the very least is an unattractive option. One half of the circle is governed by the same three people for two real years running. They don't have a good leash on their village idiots. The circle is too busy infighting about inducting useful people to keep those useful people. It has only kept so few people who fight in it due to their irrevocable investment in the circle via sect, unshaken roleplay, or numb habit.

If your implication is that AntiMagick only has more people because of their classes, I would ask how you got so much of the Demonic KoolAid with you on your vacation. Not everybody in the circle joined for the classes. We have leaders who (excepting a few) aren't idiots. We have a pretty solid basis for roleplay. Our quality of life is much higher than Magick. Our village idiots are kept on a tight leash.

I'm not really claiming AM is paradise, but I highly doubt you can tell me with a straight face that Magick is a preferable environment on the whole. I am also not claiming some of the imbalance is due to classes. However, I am not going to let Gurn and you make statements that marginalize or otherwise ignore other issues that contribute to population imbalance, sorry.

Ahkan

Demonic has had a notorious population for years. On one hand you had Captain Cavity Cleaner and on the other you had Lionas. I love Lionas to death, but he's got the amazing knack to make the first impression of "I hate him." The sad part is Lionas is a pretty cool dude and does a badass job of administrating Khandava. Stavenn? God. After the administration bleached their roleplay by killing the gods and beating the Demons-r-bad horse into demon-horse-jelly, they don't have much going for them. Then look at demonic mechanically. Want to play a demonic class? Step 1, build an accurate affliction tracker. Step 2, buy into this trashy glass cannon statpack.

Magick sort of has the same problem. I'm not going to name names but these people are batshit insane. How did they get into power? How do they stay in power? How can they find so much petty crap to argue over? It's a good thing Samaos is a badass because the rest of that is just ugh. They're guilty of all the same crap they accuse Khandava of. If you're not a level 100 pk-bot or in a clique, you may as well be petrified dog poo. Luckily they have druid and mage training wheels to infuse life into their diabetic organization.

AM. God. Their classes can all thrive in high str, high con. They have access to the best and most forms of CC. After 1-2 years of exploiting this they were able to zerg and off hours their way to obelisk dominance. They have the easiest classes in the game (pvp and pve) and the most support utility in the game. Garrynbot removed the only thing that held the zerg in check, the ability to cure. You took the bashing circle and pretty much turned pvp into a bashing game. attack! attack! attack! Once you guys hit a critical zerg mass, all you had to do was sustain. There's a constant flow of "I'm tired of losing" (Kalcer, Ander, Isabella, Xeron) from all circles into AM. Once this cycle started, it's stupid hard to break it. Why? Because you don't want to pk without 40 friends. You don't want to pk with 300 health. You don't want to pk without shard research.

Gurn

Sarrius said:

It is impossible for me to disagree any more than I do with some of the points you present in this thread, Gurn. Making beginning an offense is perfectly acceptable and noble, but let's not muddy that point with the rest of this stuff. While population imbalance is surely an issue in Imperian, I believe it is a symptom and not the disease itself. The leading cause of population imbalance is the fact that other sides aren't as appealing. This might be due to attitude, classes, people in the circle, leaders of the circle, visible roleplay, etc. Imbalance is indicative of something or some things being wrong. You cannot say 'zerglings' are a problem, because that is a broad (not to mention disingenuous) statement. Never would I think I'd see the day that people claim TOO MUCH participation is an issue. It isn't. It is a symptom, if anything at all. Anonymously posting feedback is a terrible idea. We are all adults or pseudoadults capable of sharing our opinions and input without some kind of unnecessary shroud veiling who is who. Let's not beat around the bush here - if you have input to get across to the administration, you can do so and then safely ignore any replies you perceive as venomous. Most of the 'fear' in the forums is perpetuated from one circle spending their time griping unrealistically about somebody in another circle, demonizing fellow human beings who just happen to present a point in a way found to be less appealing. It is all a ton of nonsense.

A) The issue is not "too much participation", but rather heavily skewed teams.

I don't know where you got this idea that we're saying we need to limit the amount of people participating, simply that some sort of ability could be given for smaller groups to use in order to dull the effectiveness of numbers in combat.

This has absolutely nothing to do with roleplay, people in power, etc, etc. This is not AM bashing, as you seem to think it is. This would be for the entire game, not only for people against antimagick. 

Sarrius, you responded to my post with a LOL comment vote, as you always do when you disagree with someone.

And then you go off and claim "we're all adults" and that we're unfairly "demonizing" other people. No, this is an example of the very behavior that discourages forum participation. When someone posts a comment, the response should not be to click the button in which you show the person that you believe their comment is absurd enough that you want to laugh and jeer at them.

C) Population imbalance will always happen, one way or the other. Once upon a time, it was Stavenn. Another brief period, it was magick. 

There is literally no reason to argue or puff your chest as to why you have a bigger population. The truth is, it's probably not because of you, one way or the other. One way or the other, it doesn't matter, as populations will always shift around, but these problems will always occur no matter which population it is.

Sarrius

This is why we can't have nice things. Gurn, you discuss how larger teams are a problem for combat. I pointed out that you are claiming population imbalance is a problem, not a symptom. My point is that this issue doesn't need a pure mechanical solution - a circle is attractive for many reasons. Emphasis on many. Population imbalance and zerglings wouldn't be a 'problem' if you could keep people in your circle longer than a few weeks. It is also the nature of time zones - some circles are just more dominant during certain periods of the day.

I flagged your post with a LOL because it frankly did make me laugh. Would you rather I flag it with a redundant disagree? This is what I mean by adulthood. If you cannot get past the pretty buttons to click denoting opinions on posts, how can we ever have an intelligent discussion? I will go on record saying I think you have skin as thin as tissue. The slightest affront to you usually ends in you crawling up on the cross. Now that it out in the open, what are you going to do about it?

You want to complain about larger teams, but you refuse to look inward and realize the problem isn't solely a pendulum swing issue. You would have more people to match blow for blow if your circle didn't.. well.. blow. I wish I could get this through to you: big teams are a symptom of other sides being less appealing.

Ahkan

You can't balance combat around "how many people show up."

@Gurn
You also can't whine about there being more people at a certain fight. Not to flame anyone, but I see Gurn at fewer shardfalls than Khizan, which is saying something. Your sample size and metrics are pretty suspect. Magick does pretty well when they roll in with team druidicicles and a few defenders. The problem is they really don't roll out very often.  I'm not saying AM isn't clearly dominant, but it's not out of control dominant. The benefit to AM is that some people like Azefel, Septus and maaaaaybe Ozreas regularly shard fall and know whats up. A large part of Zerg-o-tron is formed of people who couldn't hack it anywhere else and get by riding coattails and ez-mode classes. 

As for the rest of this, there's buy in associated with every game in terms of intellectual and emotional investment. That's where it falls to the guild/city/circle members to be 'accepting' and not 'douchey'. You can ease the emotional burden (god, how is this a thing) and the intellectual burden by helping people understand what the crap is going on. Iluv does this by giving people a basic system for the class. Lionas does this by beep-whirring at people to fix code. I help people put tidbits of code together to make the game easier. At some point, you're going to have to break the immersion wall and help them become a better 'player' when we're talking about pvp. *Note: I only used demonic examples because that's what I see every day. I'm sure there are awesome people in every circle.

@Sarrius
Leadership helps with morale in bad situations (Ysaviel and Khandava) and exacerbates bad morale in crappy scenarios (Menoch and Stavenn). AM is riding god mode right now. That's how you pick up at least 75% of your zerg. I'm pretty sure Ander, Brishi, and Kalcer aren't there for the arghpee. People are so in love with god-mode that they're willing to stay in a ring with Dias, who puts Ashel and Khizan to shame when it comes to denigrating his own teammates. 

At the end of the day, people are going to be better than other people by virtue of:

-Ability to buy more credits than you (Dias, Shukron, Juran, Eldreth, Justus) <-- had to edit it because someone is #butthurt.

-Ability to code better than you (Azefel, Lionas)

-More experience pking (lots of people)

-Ability to be friends with Lionas and Azefel (Waaaazzzzuuupppp)

-Ability to sniff out exploits like a bloodhound (Azefel, Septus)

-Ability to exploit a class and know when to jump ship (Kryss)

-Ability to capitalize on timing and coat tail riding ability (Sarrius) <-- oh snap

-Or any combination of the above.

tl;dr Life isn't fair. Life is hard. The best we can do is try to ease the transition for players into pk. A good start is not yelling at them when you lose...Dias. Which, to be fair, I was guilty of at one point.

Dias

Personal attacks all around by Ahkan. Nice.

You clearly skew the line of what is acceptable within Imperian but then you incorporate your own credits, buying systems, and then sit in your corner and howl at everyone else thinking you are the person in God-Mode. This is ridiculous.

Ahkan

Dias said:

Personal attacks all around by Ahkan. Nice.

You clearly skew the line of what is acceptable within Imperian but then you incorporate your own credits, buying systems, and then sit in your corner and howl at everyone else thinking you are the person in God-Mode. This is ridiculous.

I'm not really sure there's a coherent though in this emotional keyboard pounding. Are you saying Demonic is god mode? If so, well played, sir. You got me.

I'm pretty sure most of the older generation of players can vouch for my ability to kill people as any class without artifacts. Actually, in multiple games without artifacts (this was important too). The sad thing is that I got pretty twinked as Kabal and I was addicted. I can't imagine playing Ahkan without the support of tank artifacts. It's emotionally painful to see my health go from 550 to 400. I feel like I lost a textual arm.

As far as coding goes, my system was a pretty functional for a piece of crap held together by faith and an amazing alias that reset -everything-. Up until last month, I used only string lists and didn't use temporary triggers or variables. The sad thing is that it worked. I was still able to kill people (you included) before I sold out and bought in on Azefel's system. I use Azefel's crazy azn ability for one function to call afflictions (the man is a genius). The rest of the offense is mine. I understand you're jealous that you can't have nice things, but you really need to get this personality thing in check (personal experience, here. Irony too) and you'll have much better results.

To be fair though, I did flame you, twice. But really, is it flaming when it's a statement of fact? Dias yells at people and buys credits. Oh no! I did so because I just saw a log of you being a flaming box of tool to Shou. Despite the fact I growl at Captain Unconsciousness, I've never really seen Shou do a crappy thing to someone. Whereas..yeah, we'll just let this sentence finish itself. I've really only ever see Shou bend over backwards to help people, which really makes the game a better place. Your feminine cleansing product behavior really procc'd my warped sense of justice and I felt like using you as a very effective point.

People would rather deal with you being you than leave anti-magick.

Evidence:

He is considered to be approximately 105% of your might. <-- Dias to Ahkan (If I'm an artifact whore, what are you.) Perspective needed, plz.

Edit: The worst part is I related my old behavior to your current behavior. That's saying something and it makes me feel bad. I need a hug.

Dias

I am saying you sit in the corner and act like you are the God of the Game. Awesome that you could kill back in the day when IMTS barely existed. 

I also don't think you've ever killed me in a 1 v 1. Good job in a team though, not that hard to blast down a single person.

Can garner artifacts over time with ToA's, bashing, Iron Elite, whichever your flavor of tea. You just always seem to have to comment on anything I do, regardless of how large or little. "Dias cut his toe nails today, yolo for artifact nail clippers!" It's unnecessary. You yourself make a hostile and unenjoyable environment for quite a few people with how negative and abrasive you are. 

Just some food for thought.

On topic, a full plate knight taking 150 damage from nameless noobs in a fight. Ozreas was getting power housed down by the 6 druids that Magick brought. Their damage really needs to get scaled.

Sarrius

I did say for the most part.

Ahkan

That food for thought is like the forum equivalent of high fructose corn syrup: unhealthy filler without purpose. Thanks for the offer, though?

First point: The whole 'I have experience' leads into 'I have insight and perspective you don't.'  (like, being able to admit what's broken in my circle).

Second point: This doesn't matter, at all. I don't have time and no one wants to see you go all revisionist history.

Third point: If I made a character right this moment, it would take 4 years to artifact up as much as Ahkan is. Sad part, when my new newbie equals Ahkan @4yrs, he now has to deal with Ahkan @ 8yrs. It's really, really hard to bridge this gap. Life is hard. (repeat). The rest of your third point is just some livejournal stuff. You're awesome source material for what not to do. To be fair, so was I. Ask Khizan about Calhoun math. The best part is you did the same thing, but it was named after me! Dubious honor.

I felt the need to quote myself (an academic no-no) but it's so relevant it's awesome:

I love how amusing the recent trend of

-Complaint posts

-Logs/facts that controvert the previous complaint

-Spam off topics

-Followup misdirection post

Iluv

Let me just say that my systems that I'm handing out are not basic. They are the full systems I use, including UI (map, chat and affliction windows), bashing, fishing and soon to have harvesting and shopkeeping.

Gurn

Ahkan said:

You can't balance combat around "how many people show up."

You also can't whine about there being more people at a certain fight. Not to flame anyone, but I see Gurn at fewer shardfalls than Khizan, which is saying something. Your sample size and metrics are pretty suspect. Magick does pretty well when they roll in with team druidicicles and a few defenders. The problem is they really don't roll out very often.  I'm not saying AM isn't clearly dominant, but it's not out of control dominant. The benefit to AM is that some people like Azefel, Septus and maaaaaybe Ozreas regularly shard fall and know whats up. A large part of Zerg-o-tron is formed of people who couldn't hack it anywhere else and get by riding coattails and ez-mode classes. 


True. It's certainly discouraging, though, for people who want to get into it. Most of the reason why I hear when people don't want to fight is "They have 5 more people than us" rather than "They have such and such players", which, back in the days of killable whytebots, was what I usually heard.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying numbers are the be all and end all of Imperian combat, nor do I think it's "killing combat" or anything of the like, I brought up the issue to see if there was any constructive ways we could soften the damage of mass numbers.

Nowadays, I don't head into shardfall combat mostly because I'm either writing things for the Sect/bashing/working on something in game and can't be bothered to stop in the middle... Or I'm playing some other game on another computer. Shardfalls tend to be fairly boring for me, since the last couple times I've gone all I could do was spam shield, being the first target.

As for the rest of this, there's buy in associated with every game in terms of intellectual and emotional investment. That's where it falls to the guild/city/circle members to be 'accepting' and not 'douchey'. You can ease the emotional burden (god, how is this a thing) and the intellectual burden by helping people understand what the crap is going on. Iluv does this by giving people a basic system for the class. Lionas does this by beep-whirring at people to fix code. I help people put tidbits of code together to make the game easier. At some point, you're going to have to break the immersion wall and help them become a better 'player' when we're talking about pvp. *Note: I only used demonic examples because that's what I see every day. I'm sure there are awesome people in every circle.

As far as PvP teaching goes, I do more teaching and helping with that stuff rather than actual combat myself. I don't like handing out systems, but rather teaching people how to script and work things from the ground up, which is admittedly a lot slower and has a much higher dropout rate.

Yes, it's important, but having a game-wide system for easing people into it wouldn't hurt either.