1) I never remember Krysaliss trying to pk as any of my derps.
Given how long you've played, your 'lack of entrance into pk' is entirely a problem of your own motivation. If in ten years you couldn't make a basic alias or copy and paste someone else's cookie cutter system...
2) The idea that 'newbie system' will birth a mediocre fighter who will someday become an upper tier fighter is a myth. He is a newbie fighter because he's too lazy to code. If he doesn't want to code (ever) he will likely never advance past being a newb fighter.
Coding is not some sort of eldrich secret jealously guarded by the few, the proud, the neckbearded. It's not 2006, despite what Akumu will tell you in classleads. Systems are hugely accessible in Imperian. We don't have anyone nice enough to be Vadi because they don't want to support your lazy ****. I don't blame them. There's an entire thread called "coding in mudlet" where you can ripoff damn near anything. You can honestly walk up to any affliction tracking pker and say "herpderpy can I has" and most of them will give you their aff tracker and likely tell you how to use it. This applies for shield/rebounding tracking and damn near anything you could possibly want...ever.
I really enjoy this because it fosters a sense of interaction on both the coding Guru (in my case Lionas, Iniar, Fazlee, Septus) and the coding clueless (you, me, Wysrias). I ask them how to fix (and break and fix) things. They tell me I'm stupid and make bad decisions, but ultimately tell me how to fix it. As such, I've become marginally better at fix breaking.
The lion's share of coding has been removed from your responsibility (autocuring). The last chunk is your responsibility. You can honestly collude and borrow other student's work to make the grade and show up to pk land with at least half of a right answer. The bandwagon of zerg in Antioch have figured it out. So can you. (they honestly just cut and paste 1 alias. I'm not even kidding.)
I skimmed the posts(correct me if any points have already been addressed), but here's why I thought of this.
I'm coming back from a hiatus, and the Hunter skillsets has been changed around. What the hell, I think, I may as well sit down and get a good one going. Hey, I've taken coding classes, I've coded stuff before. No problem.
Well, I got it all planned out, and I was so excited to start, but then I realized something.
It would take me 10+ hours of coding and testing before I even got to fight.
How many other games require 10+ hours of not playing the game to learn to play?
Are you going to get good at LoL or Starcraft 2 or whatever right away? Hell no! But you get good by playing the game more and understanding its mechanics, not by reading manuals on something completely different.
In my opinion, that's one of the reasons why Imperian is facing a declining playerbase. Why play Imperian when you can have all the other games that don't require you to read a coding manual to get good(good, mind you, not top tier) at? With Imperian being increasingly PK based(I came back and suddenly even caravans are PK based, apparently), we need to make combat more accessible to the general public.
In the end, being the best in Imperian will always require coding. That's fine. But why should we drive away new players by throwing code manuals at them? People do not join Imperian because they hear it has really complex combat. People join MUDs because they're free, they like RPGs, and they don't require a good computer to run.
I'm sorry you don't recall me fighting, it happened. I'll be sure to alert you personally next time I participate. :P I'm pretty sure Sarrius was my first kill, actually.
I fought on Krys primarily as a Hunter, Dymphna primarily as a Diabolist. I fought as two other classes as Krys, but mostly I had gotten disillusioned with the attitudes of other PKers by that point so I just didn't have a desire to continue.
There is nothing wrong with someone deciding to remain a casual, novice fighter. There is something wrong with the idea that a large segment of the game should not be allowed to reasonably participate in a large part of what the game is built around because they don't want to invest hours of time learning to code.
My lack of entry into combat was explained. It was not laziness, for sure. I invested a RIDICULOUS amount of time reading everything I could get my hands on, teaching myself how to code in CMUD, dissecting every system I could get my hands on to learn how different people approached coding logic and so I could settle on a system that worked with how I think, then a full month of repeated ganking/dying/crashing because of a troll killed my desire to keep going, for years. Why waste all that energy when I could have a much more enjoyable time doing things that come naturally to me?
It shouldn't be like that.
Sethren convinced me to try again. He had to get me drunk to do it. And I did, and I had fun. And I kept at it for awhile. At that particular time, the PK culture was such that if you actively participated -ever-, you could expect absolutely no peace -ever-. Since I primarily get enjoyment out of the writing and leadership end of it, that was a huge problem. So I stopped.
See Gurn's rant. A+
Edit - That first system I built was from the ground up. Not on someone else's framework. I planned it out, got all the messages, input everything myself. That's not laziness. So, yanno, take that as you will.
How one manages their offense and defense, and the decisions made in larger scales of combat, are the only ways to measure skill in this game's combat. Detracting from that by handing people a canned offense upon rolling their character seems like an awful idea. While people on the other side of the canyon of this argument might claim that it would be great for them, you have to realize how disenfranchised that makes the players who care far more about this field of gameplay than you do - these are people who want an environment where one can make skillful plays. Cheapening that experience because people cannot be bothered to learn to automate some aspects of their combat decision-making seems, perhaps, a little lazy on the part of people requesting that cheapening.
To make a great example, Gurn is correct - you cannot get good at League of Legends or Starcraft or any other game without playing it, failing at being any good, and then proceeding to analyze your gameplay for mistakes/faults. Some people are naturally more talented, but you can build the skills required the hard way - research, gameplay, observation of players better than yourself, etc. The reasonable thing to request, in that case, is that the community be more helpful - helpful does not mean having the 'generosity' to do all the footwork for somebody who cannot help their own self. Something about teaching men to fish, I think?
EDIT: Making Imperian more accessible is a community-oriented effort just as much as it is asking for the Administration to foot more and more work of the actual gameplay of Imperian for you. Think about the long term effects on gameplay and the combat environment. Giving people the answers isn't going to make them any more interested in the riddle. Imperian is not in a decline because 'combat is too hard' - combat is the easiest and most accessible it has ever been. There are classes that require very little coding, just simple, cut and dry aliases - something that most clients have a step-by-step interface to guide you through making. While plenty of classes are 'affliction classes', some of those classes have been evolving to have a second route to be more accessible to less coding-adept players, and those routes are no less viable in the situations those types of people would like excel at. Imperian is in a decline because it is part of a dying genre, and there are plenty of other IRE games that have some kind of leg up on it in terms of philosophy, gameplay, support, or age. Imperian is in a decline because the administration makes stupid apple bag cash grabs.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>****, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
No one is really suggesting that they put in a one button kill system, unless I'm misreading something. Default "buttons" + better default highlights and echoes seems to be the derp level baseline that people on either side of the 'canyon' agree with.
To go further than what seems to be the consensus:
An aff or status tracker with customize-able guessing logic (ex. guess most important cure down this list or guess at random) and an affliction queue decider that you have to input yourself (simple example being AFFQUEUE affqueue1 numbness|asthma|hemotoxin|weakness then queue eqbal dstab (affqueue1[1]) (affqueue1[2]) seem to be acceptable to me as well, since all that does is remove the coding aspect of making a tracker and something that queues what affs you want based on that tracker. The tracking isn't even inlined, so the fear about things like the ifshield or ifrebounding then rsl else dsl doesn't happen. No stock data means there's no prebuilt g-killer, just a g-utility set.
If that breaks the game and removes skill based decisions, then the game would be broken if anyone freely gave out their tracker to everyone.
Coding is a way to automate decision making, yes. You can minimize coding without minimizing decision making by adding in some of the baseline features needed for systems. This is why autocuring made its way in despite all of the similar complaints (though I wish it made you go through a tutorial to set up your autocuring the first time, just as a way to familiarize people with it.)
The idea is not to put in automated win buttons. The idea is to make fighting more newbie friendly with buttons to press, in order to get people to enjoy combat enough to want to build their own system.
I mean, hell. I just mentioned this game to my Computer Science friends who code 50x faster than I do and they didn't want to do all the parsing and coding required to play a game like this. Imagine how it's going to feel for a newbie who's never seen code before.
While the concept of a simple target alias variable seems simple to everyone here, to someone who's never heard of code before, they need to be explained on what an alias is, and how variables store values. Everyone here might be a genius, but seeing as there was two entire 2 hour classes in my beginning coding class devoted to explaining variables and their uses, it's not that simple to everyone.
setalias pib cast penetration immerse batter at &tar
Now the easy part: During combat, you use "t khizan" then spam "pib" repeatedly until he's dead or you get another target called.
You learn what variables are in middle school algebra classes. This isn't <insert complicated coding task>, it's learning how to use &tar instead of manually typing the target's name in every command. That is all it takes to participate in team combat as a Mage. I can set you up with 5 aliases total and teach you what order to use them in and get you pulling off lavablasts against other super basic combatants. If, with a combination of HELP ALIAS, the example I just gave you, a very rudimentary knowledge of what a variable is(again, something that most people learn in their K12 days), and the willingness of myself and others to teach you and answer any questions you've got(as @Ahkan says, most of us are willing to give you a majority of what you want for free, even better, most of us are willing to show you how to do it for yourself, and I promise I've taught people less capable of learning than you things more complicated than simple aliases), you can't manage to understand how that extremely basic example works(which I've told you is more than enough to be useful as a Mage in the majority of Imperian's conflict situations), this isn't the best game for you. There's no way around that.
And @Kabaal, the game IS balanced in the manner you speak of. Example: Give someone Iluv's system and have them go Renegade/Saboteur, and suddenly they're a godmode combatant and practically impossible to kill 1v1 as any other class besides Hunter, Renegade, Diabolist, and MAYBE sabreTemplar. That power is something that comes with the burden of putting in the time/effort of learning how to code and how to play an aff class well. It's what allows a good combatant with practically 0 artifacts(Kryss) to kill a fully artifacted Druid fighting with a bashing alias.
The best compromise I've found with getting someone the ability to use those classes without just giving them a kill button is to give them a basic affliction tracker and leave literally all the rest to them(building queues, writing conditionals, actually doing the "if t.afflictedWith("blah") then queueToxin("blah")" portions of it). But at that point, people are either enthusiastic about it and willing to learn how this stuff actually works(Oystir), or they seem absurdly opposed to actually spending any time whatsoever learning the Introduction to Lua stuff that is required to actually use it. The people in the second category, the ones unwilling to actually put in effort and time, don't have what it takes to play those classes, and should be switching to the classes that have easy-mode, 5-alias paths like Fire Mage, Druid, or ClaymoreKnight.
And @Kabaal, the game IS balanced in the manner you speak of. Example: Give someone Iluv's system and have them go Renegade/Saboteur, and suddenly they're a godmode combatant and practically impossible to kill 1v1 as any other class besides Hunter, Renegade, Diabolist, and MAYBE sabreTemplar. That power is something that comes with the burden of putting in the time/effort of learning how to code and how to play an aff class well. It's what allows a good combatant with practically 0 artifacts(Kryss) to kill a fully artifacted Druid fighting with a bashing alias.
The best compromise I've found with getting someone the ability to use those classes without just giving them a kill button is to give them a basic affliction tracker and leave literally all the rest to them(building queues, writing conditionals, actually doing the "if t.afflictedWith("blah") then queueToxin("blah")" portions of it). But at that point, people are either enthusiastic about it and willing to learn how this stuff actually works(Oystir), or they seem absurdly opposed to actually spending any time whatsoever learning the Introduction to Lua stuff that is required to actually use it. The people in the second category, the ones unwilling to actually put in effort and time, don't have what it takes to play those classes, and should be switching to the classes that have easy-mode, 5-alias paths like Fire Mage, Druid, or ClaymoreKnight.
This was exactly my point? Except you seem to think that people not wanting to code a tracker and everything else is equivalent to them not wanting to try. You also seem to think that it's better for the game that it's hidden behind a coding barrier. If that's your opinion, then we'll just have to agree to disagree.
Edit: I've personally spent ungodly numbers of hours with Krysaliss on coding stuff. I started helping Geneve out today. These people aren't unwilling to put in effort. They aren't saying they can't make a simple alias like has been shouted ooooover and over again. I just don't understand why there's this gripe when we're basically agreeing. You even restated the same thing I just posted
Edit 2: Well, a small difference between my example and yours. I don't think having them write the if themselves is any different than them knowing that a tracker will go down a list they set if the target has it or not per the tracker. Making them code the if because they're 'lazy' if they don't is pedantic. Same reason I don't think they have to throw in an if to the autocuring, but they do have to decide IF the autocuring will do X or Y.
No, you're putting words into my mouth. If I think someone isn't willing to put effort in at all, and comes in with an attitude like "coding isn't for me, I'm not going to put any effort into learning because I'm mentally incapable of learning it(which is a spurious notion in itself)", I don't give them an aff tracker and I probably don't have a lot of patience when helping with things, but I'll still try. If someone shows a willingness to actually put in some time and effort in understanding, I have, on multiple occasions, given out my affliction tracker freely to them, and even give them examples of how you build basic queues off of my system. I'm glad to help ease the burden for people when I can, but a lot of people come into it with this silly "basic coding is impossible if you're not a super-genius-nerd" preconception and it can easily poison the rest of their experience in Imperian.
With the new separators, ifeqbal, queue eqbal, autocuring and auto defs it is almost entirely possible to fight with nothing but in game aliases!
Fighting at a basic level requires nothing more than using these and occasionally a keybind in mudclientofyourchoice.
Moving from that to a toxin or aff tracking system in game is frankly a level of sophistication that goes beyond what I'd like to see for combat assistance. After that there isn't much left to do for some classes! People are saying 'press f1 to pwn' because that's what it would end up being.
Before I knew how to code I was tracking rebounding with a flashing highlight, shield with a different color and various other things all different colors. My attack macros were 'dumb', just the skill command. Over time I added checks for various things, and eight years later my curing system was pretty good! You don't have to use code to track things.
Then autocuring came in. It's nice to see everyone fighting a bit more now and it has very much increased the resilience in combat of the general population.
Things like automated aff tracking in offense though is where I would draw the line - as Sarrius said above, once we have these kinds of aids where is the personal player skill coming into it? It's a slippery slope that ends with people winning because they are more artifacted, not more skilled with their code or their class.
The people in the second category, the ones unwilling to actually put in effort and time
You said they don't want to put in effort and time. This constitutes saying they don't want to try, IMO. To be fair, you're not one of the ones who outright called them "lazy", but there are a bunch of people trying to make points similar to yours. Like I said, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree at this point.
I made this point on the aff tracker already. If the code is there, and you have to input the actual afflictions it checks for and moves down the list on, then there is no difference between that and giving them a tracker. If that's a slippery slope, then we're already going pretty fast.
As only a dabbler in combat, thought I would put my two cents in. I have always found a lot of help for coding. I can not code. I slap together messy pieces of triggers and alias's. I ask questions of those that have more knowledge. Cassius, Pellerin, Baasche, Iniar, Ahkan and others have always been patient with me. I start out with asking myself what I am trying to do, try to code it, having it fail, then ask others what am I doing wrong, or how can I make this better. I like to know what I had been doing wrong. As a non coder, that one forgotten bracket is not obvious to me, as it would be them. Is this my downfall for every becoming a good combatant? No, that would be the fault of me not really getting into it, practicing and failing for hours, to learn combat awareness.
Anyone can join group combat and be useful. For solo fights, I think it is that only the higher tier of combatants that will go out and try to find fights. I know whenever I had a bounty on me, and Iluv, or Khizan or someone ran into me bashing, or harvesting, I never fought back. I don't have the combat knowledge. I had fun running around the realms for days from Sarrius. One on one, I don't have the experience to do well, and had no ambition to put that practice in. Is that a bad thing? No.
I know in magick at least, several clans that have files to help new combatants. Lines to trigger from, helpful alias's, tips and tricks. I can't sit down at a piano and play Mozart, but after a few minutes, I might be able to figure out twinkle twinkle little star. There are prodigies that can enter the pk world, and just 'get it' right away, most of us are not like that.
It is not artifacts that keep me back either, I have slowly added to these.
Combat awareness is what is the key I think, and that is something that has to be learnt by each player, not something coded in.
I don't think aff trackers should be a thing. I think giving new players the framework for an offence is good-- Druid players, for instance, would have pre-programmed macros which do efficient, but basic combos with their wisps and such.
Affliction players, on the other hand, would NOT RECEIVE TRACKING but rather receive helpful things like a way to queue toxins and in-game programming of checking them off a list. For instance, I could set an ordered list of afflictions that I want to give with D-stab, and it will choose the first available toxin in that list for me. It knows if I hit with the toxin, but literally nothing else. I must manually set afflictions to cured.
Now, instead of scripting an efficient array and/or a switch/elseif statements or whatever, a new player can now focus on building a tracker. If they don't want to build a tracker, well hey, that's fine, you'll get a tidy, simple to use list of toxins to use.
As far as the pre-programmed hotkey/macro thing, give affliction professions a slight difference in doing this-- Instead of THIS MACRO TO HIT, you simply have THIS MACRO TO SET THIS THING HAS BEEN CURED.
Example(first toxins that come to mind, don't worry about it):
SET AFFLIST 1: Hemotoxin SET AFFLIST 2: Metrazol
SET AFFLIST 3: Ciguatoxin SET AFFLIST 4: Mercury
SET AFFLIST 5: Atropine
Okay! Let's fight!
A wild Kabaal has appeared!
F1, F2, F3
Dstab: Hemotoxin and Metrazol
Kabaal touches a tree tattoo.
Kabaal quickly eats a piece of kelp.
Oh! I saw he eat kelp! Hit F4! Hmm, I only had Metrazol too, better hit F5 as well.
Kabaal hits me. Ow.
F1! F2!
Dstab: Hemotoxin and Metrazol. Shadowplanted Kelp.
Kabaal quickly eats a piece of kelp.
Aha! That was a shadowplant. No eating needed!
Kabaal hits me. Ow.
Dstab: Ciguatoxin and Mercury.
Kabaal quickly eats a piece of kelp.
Kabaal concentrates on purging his body of foreign substances.
Well... I know hemotoxin's gone. F4. Hmm, I don't know what he purged. I guess I won't hit anything until later.
Kabaal hits me again. Owwww. F10! F10!
and so on, and so forth.
-----------------------------------
It can be improved in a number of ways, depending on how easy/hard you want to make it for the players. Allow them to bring all curing messages to a separate window, for instance, so they don't have to read so quick, or give them the ability to highlight things so they can respond by color(Osu! anyone?).
Boom. Suddenly, they have a workable affliction system, but nothing that will be able to kill a player who has tinkered with their own, more effecient code.
This sort of system allows the player to feel part of the combat and excited. People love pressing buttons and knowing they do stuff, so let them press buttons and do stuff. Let beginner Imperian play as either a coding game, alias game, or a reaction based game if they so choose.
I think its a pretty massive disservice to new people to tell them they must code an affliction tracker to be at all relevant at the game. That isn't to say anyone in this thread is saying that, but its definitely a pretty prevalent attitude.
I didn't bother writing a single line of code for imperian (outside of basic aliases/triggers) for about a year after I started playing. I played deathknight and assassin. Caused a few people to cry. Was still great fun. It became a lot more fun once I did write a tracker (which is possibly one of the ugliest, most inefficient things I've ever written), but that was because it opens up being able to kill a few people you perhaps couldn't quite manage before.
My personal opinion is if you don't enjoy pk without a tracker, you're probably not going to enjoy it (longterm) with one. The coding barrier is only as big as you make it in most cases (there are of course some notable exceptions to that rule, but fixing those on a case by case basis is a much more reasonable expectation, I think).
I'm on my first attempt at a "real" tracker, since half the reason I'm playing Imp again is to code (IRONY?). Before, I typically (no idea how many full systems I coded over the years) had like 300 macros or so which let me do everything I could possibly do with a couple button presses alongside a handful of highlights. I think my first offensive automation on CMud was something like a straight dstab 1 2, dstab 3 4, dstab 5 6 down the line type of deal ><
I'm mostly just not opposed to the idea of a server provided tracker and affqueue accompaniment if it doesn't provide stock affqueues, but I wouldn't call it a #1 priority. The only thing that I think should be considered necessary after all the debate is much better stock highlighting/echoes with customization options.
Default aliases would be nice, or a tutorial that has a nub setup the 'defaults' for themselves so they get familiar with the server alias system on top of having the basics. Seeing the UI elements in the web client expanded on and improved (there's an annoying follow bug on the mob here list, it seems a bit slow, etc) would also be swell. Long term, a wizard for creating triggers/aliases/macros that streamlined the process would help reduce coding needs while still requiring decision making on what's going on.
@Cassius The ugliest thing I've ever coded was a progress quest thing for whenever I used dirty words.
Most of you, if not all of you, know how to drive a car, yes? But not all of you know how to drift, race, or change its parts.
You're not forced to do anything higher tier. It's completely optional, unless you take the time to learn your craft.
It's not necessary for anyone to become an artifacted, top tier fighter in this game.
This type of game isn't like every other game you've played. I highly doubt you have the customized options that you have here compared to WoW, LoL, et cetera.
Say and compare it all like. So what if you hate coding. This tells me you're not willing to learn new things, especially if it's challenging in any way.
Ahkan has said numerous times on here. There are coders here willing to give you advice, teach you, and most importantly, give you free code.
The admins aren't Gods that can fix everything we ask. Some of that is your responsibility too.
Gurn said: Now, instead of scripting an efficient array and/or a switch/elseif statements or whatever, a new player can now focus on building a tracker. If they don't want to build a tracker, well hey, that's fine, you'll get a tidy, simple to use list of toxins to use.
Anybody who can write the tracker is capable of handling any other coding demands in this game with an almost trivial amount of effort. Anybody who can't write the tracker is going to be flinging afflictions at the wall and praying and would almost certainly be better off doing something like 'damage' that has at least a chance of killing somebody.
Here's the other thing about it: That kind of thing will not help in teamfights at all, and those are by far the most numerous fights. It won't help even a little bit. Why not? Let's say you roll into a teamfight with John the New Sabreknight, Jack the New Assassin, and Joe the New Diabolist. They each hit their awesome new built in offense button. What happens is this: John dsls with numbness/asthma, Jack dstabs with numbness/asthma, the Diabolist stares numbness/asthma, and Ahkan screams in incoherent fury.
Also, combat goes by so fast that manual healing is all but impossible; "push f5 to register them curing asthma" is useless to the point of hilarity.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
We -are- asking for everyone to be able to drive the car (engage in PK) not drift the car (be a crazy good fighter).
To take that analogy a little further, my partner -is- a drift racer. (Not Kabaal). He will be the first to tell you that there are people who drive (who don't enjoy it) and drivers (who love being behind a wheel). Among drivers, not everyone is cut out to be a drifter. You can teach some basic skill, but the really challenging stuff is beyond some people. They lack the sense of timing, or the balls, or the crazy, or some combination thereof to really get to the highest levels of skill. This is true, also, of combat.
Hating coding does not mean you are not willing to learn to code. I both bash and code. So, proof!
Also, the assumption that 'if someone doesn't want to learn x, they are unwilling to learn at all' is the most asinine thing I've heard in awhile (and before I get yelled at, I'm attacking the idea, not the person). There is such an abundance of things to know that where one chooses to devote their time and energy has no reflection on their overall desire to learn. Even having the -time- to learn to code is a problem. Not everyone playing this game has the freedom of hours of their leisure time to spend doing something that will only serve them to become a better PKer. Quite a number of players are adults, with families and obligations that limit their ability to do that.
Not one person is asking for an instant-win button. Can we just all stop arguing as if we are?
What we are asking for, as far as I can speak for the others on my 'team', is a stepping stone, easy to use, obvious way for all players to get into combat at a basic level. This will not make them fabulous overnight. This will allow your collective world Shaylei's to participate and help out. _SOME_ people will want to go farther, to be the Eldreth's of the world. They'll need to then learn more about their class, other classes, coding, strategy, etc. Most won't. That's ok.
Before I get a reiteration of the BUT THAT IS ALREADY IN THE GAME noise, let me just remind you that I've stated multiple times that there isn't a clear path to discovering that in-game for new players/older players who might want to participate. If you ask the -right- people, you'll get that info. If you read the numerous combat-oriented files in the game, you'll get a very different mental picture of what combat requires. If it is already possible to teach a newb two aliases and make them useful fighters, then we, collectively, need to get better about pointing that out.
Also, while it would be swanky if the admin could just get on coding this into the game, I don't think it's necessary. I think we could get a few concerned Imperianites with coding ability together and create systems using the web-based client (because a LOT of true newbs are using it) that has some of those basic aliases built into the system's buttons, along with a smattering of other simple coded things that folks will need.
We could export those files and make them accessible on the forums. Admin could toss them in a READ THIS NEWB part of the newbie section. Players could encourage newbies/those interested in fighting to snag them. Having access to the code will grant them a starting point for deconstruction and learning if they want to do more. Javascript has a ton of resources available for free online to learn more if and when they are ready to advance.
If it really is as easy to fight now as people are saying, that really shouldn't take that long or that much work to do.
The admin could do some of the shiny 'this is how to fight' highlights and such that Kabaal was talking about (which I think would be nifty), but I don't think that's necessary to get done what I, at least, think would be helpful.
People having the ability to help in teams already exists. Wysrias' idea for info is a really good idea to help getting better.
What I'm saying is that it seems people want to be able to drift and race without putting the effort to learn how, and I for one don't want to see this turn into, 'press a button, then sit back and watch the win.'
And yet, nobody wants that, and we've repeatedly said we don't.
And I, at least, have said like four times - if that is the case (that we have this ability already) then we are doing a crappy job of getting that information out there and we need to fix that.
That's what it will turn into for people who already have put in the effort to learn to code.
Could you imagine Mathiaus with server side affliction tracking removing his guesswork?
Could you imagine the cleric/Templar with the effective zergling +1 damage that perfect shield rebound tracking would give them?
Wysrias has the right idea here. It would give people the information on what they can do to get around. Which is exactly what you're asking for. Outside of that, it's on a person to use that knowledge effectively. For most people, that means coding around it. If you want to go Icarius mode and shoestring together the most basic of aliases and triggers, go for it. It will take all of an hour. More sophisticated stuff takes time and investment and that's not going to change on the basis of "I hate putting in the work to git gud."
I still don't know how to code fancy crap. Modified eden is the extent of what I can do. The difference being, I'm not asking for something server side to shore up my own ineptitude where code demands something more than nested if statements demands.
I realize that I could spend a weekend on codeacademy and figure out how2lua. But I also really want to watch Gohan fight Cell again. I complain about a lot of things on the forums, but something like coding where it's entirely on us to decide our own involvement isn't one of them. If I get screwed because I forgot to code in some fancy system to track entropy damage on a target, it's my fault.
So please. What mythical "my day" am I referring to?
We're going to channel Uncle Septus when he made light that you claim not to want to ask someone else to show you how to get something to work. Isn't it weird that you did this with all of your WoW add ons? They're coded in lua, just like mudlet! Isn't it weird that you can put forth the effort to get someone else's code in WoW, but not here?
You shot down every offer to 'compromise' outside of 'plz pk for me', all while accusing us of not acquiescing to your 'reasonable request'. The passive aggressive emotes were also pretty useful in the context of forums. I don't think the problem is the coding buy in, but there were a lot of ideas to lower that bar.
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How many other games require 10+ hours of not playing the game to learn to play?
People do not join Imperian because they hear it has really complex combat. People join MUDs because they're free, they like RPGs, and they don't require a good computer to run.
I fought on Krys primarily as a Hunter, Dymphna primarily as a Diabolist. I fought as two other classes as Krys, but mostly I had gotten disillusioned with the attitudes of other PKers by that point so I just didn't have a desire to continue.
There is nothing wrong with someone deciding to remain a casual, novice fighter. There is something wrong with the idea that a large segment of the game should not be allowed to reasonably participate in a large part of what the game is built around because they don't want to invest hours of time learning to code.
My lack of entry into combat was explained. It was not laziness, for sure. I invested a RIDICULOUS amount of time reading everything I could get my hands on, teaching myself how to code in CMUD, dissecting every system I could get my hands on to learn how different people approached coding logic and so I could settle on a system that worked with how I think, then a full month of repeated ganking/dying/crashing because of a troll killed my desire to keep going, for years. Why waste all that energy when I could have a much more enjoyable time doing things that come naturally to me?
It shouldn't be like that.
Sethren convinced me to try again. He had to get me drunk to do it. And I did, and I had fun. And I kept at it for awhile. At that particular time, the PK culture was such that if you actively participated -ever-, you could expect absolutely no peace -ever-. Since I primarily get enjoyment out of the writing and leadership end of it, that was a huge problem. So I stopped.
See Gurn's rant. A+
Edit - That first system I built was from the ground up. Not on someone else's framework. I planned it out, got all the messages, input everything myself. That's not laziness. So, yanno, take that as you will.
While the concept of a simple target alias variable seems simple to everyone here, to someone who's never heard of code before, they need to be explained on what an alias is, and how variables store values. Everyone here might be a genius, but seeing as there was two entire 2 hour classes in my beginning coding class devoted to explaining variables and their uses, it's not that simple to everyone.
And @Iniar, you get love too. Belatedly.
And @Kabaal, the game IS balanced in the manner you speak of. Example: Give someone Iluv's system and have them go Renegade/Saboteur, and suddenly they're a godmode combatant and practically impossible to kill 1v1 as any other class besides Hunter, Renegade, Diabolist, and MAYBE sabreTemplar. That power is something that comes with the burden of putting in the time/effort of learning how to code and how to play an aff class well. It's what allows a good combatant with practically 0 artifacts(Kryss) to kill a fully artifacted Druid fighting with a bashing alias.
The best compromise I've found with getting someone the ability to use those classes without just giving them a kill button is to give them a basic affliction tracker and leave literally all the rest to them(building queues, writing conditionals, actually doing the "if t.afflictedWith("blah") then queueToxin("blah")" portions of it). But at that point, people are either enthusiastic about it and willing to learn how this stuff actually works(Oystir), or they seem absurdly opposed to actually spending any time whatsoever learning the Introduction to Lua stuff that is required to actually use it. The people in the second category, the ones unwilling to actually put in effort and time, don't have what it takes to play those classes, and should be switching to the classes that have easy-mode, 5-alias paths like Fire Mage, Druid, or ClaymoreKnight.
Affliction players, on the other hand, would NOT RECEIVE TRACKING but rather receive helpful things like a way to queue toxins and in-game programming of checking them off a list. For instance, I could set an ordered list of afflictions that I want to give with D-stab, and it will choose the first available toxin in that list for me. It knows if I hit with the toxin, but literally nothing else. I must manually set afflictions to cured.
Now, instead of scripting an efficient array and/or a switch/elseif statements or whatever, a new player can now focus on building a tracker. If they don't want to build a tracker, well hey, that's fine, you'll get a tidy, simple to use list of toxins to use.
As far as the pre-programmed hotkey/macro thing, give affliction professions a slight difference in doing this-- Instead of THIS MACRO TO HIT, you simply have THIS MACRO TO SET THIS THING HAS BEEN CURED.
SET AFFLIST 1: Hemotoxin
SET AFFLIST 2: Metrazol
SET AFFLIST 4: Mercury
-----------------------------------
Boom. Suddenly, they have a workable affliction system, but nothing that will be able to kill a player who has tinkered with their own, more effecient code.
This sort of system allows the player to feel part of the combat and excited. People love pressing buttons and knowing they do stuff, so let them press buttons and do stuff. Let beginner Imperian play as either a coding game, alias game, or a reaction based game if they so choose.
I think its a pretty massive disservice to new people to tell them they must code an affliction tracker to be at all relevant at the game. That isn't to say anyone in this thread is saying that, but its definitely a pretty prevalent attitude.
I didn't bother writing a single line of code for imperian (outside of basic aliases/triggers) for about a year after I started playing. I played deathknight and assassin. Caused a few people to cry. Was still great fun. It became a lot more fun once I did write a tracker (which is possibly one of the ugliest, most inefficient things I've ever written), but that was because it opens up being able to kill a few people you perhaps couldn't quite manage before.
My personal opinion is if you don't enjoy pk without a tracker, you're probably not going to enjoy it (longterm) with one. The coding barrier is only as big as you make it in most cases (there are of course some notable exceptions to that rule, but fixing those on a case by case basis is a much more reasonable expectation, I think).
You're not forced to do anything higher tier. It's completely optional, unless you take the time to learn your craft.
It's not necessary for anyone to become an artifacted, top tier fighter in this game.
This type of game isn't like every other game you've played. I highly doubt you have the customized options that you have here compared to WoW, LoL, et cetera.
Say and compare it all like. So what if you hate coding. This tells me you're not willing to learn new things, especially if it's challenging in any way.
Ahkan has said numerous times on here. There are coders here willing to give you advice, teach you, and most importantly, give you free code.
The admins aren't Gods that can fix everything we ask. Some of that is your responsibility too.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
To take that analogy a little further, my partner -is- a drift racer. (Not Kabaal). He will be the first to tell you that there are people who drive (who don't enjoy it) and drivers (who love being behind a wheel). Among drivers, not everyone is cut out to be a drifter. You can teach some basic skill, but the really challenging stuff is beyond some people. They lack the sense of timing, or the balls, or the crazy, or some combination thereof to really get to the highest levels of skill. This is true, also, of combat.
Hating coding does not mean you are not willing to learn to code. I both bash and code. So, proof!
Also, the assumption that 'if someone doesn't want to learn x, they are unwilling to learn at all' is the most asinine thing I've heard in awhile (and before I get yelled at, I'm attacking the idea, not the person). There is such an abundance of things to know that where one chooses to devote their time and energy has no reflection on their overall desire to learn. Even having the -time- to learn to code is a problem. Not everyone playing this game has the freedom of hours of their leisure time to spend doing something that will only serve them to become a better PKer. Quite a number of players are adults, with families and obligations that limit their ability to do that.
Not one person is asking for an instant-win button. Can we just all stop arguing as if we are?
Before I get a reiteration of the BUT THAT IS ALREADY IN THE GAME noise, let me just remind you that I've stated multiple times that there isn't a clear path to discovering that in-game for new players/older players who might want to participate. If you ask the -right- people, you'll get that info. If you read the numerous combat-oriented files in the game, you'll get a very different mental picture of what combat requires. If it is already possible to teach a newb two aliases and make them useful fighters, then we, collectively, need to get better about pointing that out.
Also, while it would be swanky if the admin could just get on coding this into the game, I don't think it's necessary. I think we could get a few concerned Imperianites with coding ability together and create systems using the web-based client (because a LOT of true newbs are using it) that has some of those basic aliases built into the system's buttons, along with a smattering of other simple coded things that folks will need.
We could export those files and make them accessible on the forums. Admin could toss them in a READ THIS NEWB part of the newbie section. Players could encourage newbies/those interested in fighting to snag them. Having access to the code will grant them a starting point for deconstruction and learning if they want to do more. Javascript has a ton of resources available for free online to learn more if and when they are ready to advance.
If it really is as easy to fight now as people are saying, that really shouldn't take that long or that much work to do.
The admin could do some of the shiny 'this is how to fight' highlights and such that Kabaal was talking about (which I think would be nifty), but I don't think that's necessary to get done what I, at least, think would be helpful.
People having the ability to help in teams already exists. Wysrias' idea for info is a really good idea to help getting better.
What I'm saying is that it seems people want to be able to drift and race without putting the effort to learn how, and I for one don't want to see this turn into, 'press a button, then sit back and watch the win.'
And I, at least, have said like four times - if that is the case (that we have this ability already) then we are doing a crappy job of getting that information out there and we need to fix that.
Could you imagine Mathiaus with server side affliction tracking removing his guesswork?
Could you imagine the cleric/Templar with the effective zergling +1 damage that perfect shield rebound tracking would give them?
Wysrias has the right idea here. It would give people the information on what they can do to get around. Which is exactly what you're asking for. Outside of that, it's on a person to use that knowledge effectively. For most people, that means coding around it. If you want to go Icarius mode and shoestring together the most basic of aliases and triggers, go for it. It will take all of an hour. More sophisticated stuff takes time and investment and that's not going to change on the basis of "I hate putting in the work to git gud."
I misread that. I'm sorry. -is a grouch and goes to sit in the corner-
EDIT - And oh god, the return of 'Back in MY day, we had to code UPHILL BOTH WAYS'. -yawns-
Learning to code will always be useful for this game. Even if basic combat entry doesn't require advanced coding knowledge.
I realize that I could spend a weekend on codeacademy and figure out how2lua. But I also really want to watch Gohan fight Cell again. I complain about a lot of things on the forums, but something like coding where it's entirely on us to decide our own involvement isn't one of them. If I get screwed because I forgot to code in some fancy system to track entropy damage on a target, it's my fault.
So please. What mythical "my day" am I referring to?
You shot down every offer to 'compromise' outside of 'plz pk for me', all while accusing us of not acquiescing to your 'reasonable request'. The passive aggressive emotes were also pretty useful in the context of forums. I don't think the problem is the coding buy in, but there were a lot of ideas to lower that bar.