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Improving Imperian

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  • SkyeSkye Member Posts: 100 ✭✭✭
    I get what you're saying, and you're right that there are resources out there to learn. Seraphyne has a great system that she's offered before, along with just being willing to teach in general. I'm sure Eldreth is great as well.

    However Risca and I have implemented a thing now where I don't ask him for help with this kind of stuff. As I said, I'm really bad at coding and systems. I have a track record for breaking things with minimal effort to a result of him not being able to figure out what I did and how to fix it, and so he gets frustrated and I feel terrible. I absolutely do not want to create that kind of dynamic with someone else as well. I don't want to burden someone with my complete ineptness.

    Basically what I was trying to say before is that is sucks that if I want to use Mage now, I'd have to. It was't like that before and I don't feel like it's a good thing that it's like that now.




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  • SarriusSarrius Member, Beta Testers Posts: 1,682 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Mage was designed to have a very effective, very linear combat style (Fire's explosive damage) and also another style (the typical, digital fencing tryhard affliction style with Decompose). Maybe it is because I was involved in helping the class to 3.0 step by step the past month, but what exactly is complicated about Fire's listed goal of 'mash out fire damage with a firecircle up and then lavablast a dude for eleventy-billion'? I am actually genuinely curious what it is that could be changed to make the style easier for a new player or hesitant/confused player to access.
    <div>Message #2062&nbsp; Sent By: (imperian)&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 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>
  • BellentineBellentine Member Posts: 56 ✭✭
    In support of @skye , perhaps I can explain how basic my system was.  I had trigs for each level of attunement, from light blue to blood red.  I would hit a button until it went red, then I'd hit another button.  Bam, Icicles.  I had a different button that'd do some flame stuff, keep going until its red, bam, lava blast.  I'd count in my head to eight, if I went beyond that, time to go to my third button, which just chained drain and formaldehyde.  If things got tricky, I could break legs.  That's -it-.  With that I was able to win circle tournaments and participate with meaning in shard falls.

    That's the basic level of coding we're talking here.  New-mage offers a fire path which is vastly more complex. I appreciate the effort, I truly do - but saying there's a way for the basic coder in this profession now is fallacy.  I've tried the beta, the fire path offers a moderate level of damage that's soaked easily by people I used to detonate.  I appreciate the work, but its another simple class that's been converted to a pseudo-afflictor role that requires tracking.  I didn't pay hundreds to use a quarter of my skills.
  • SarriusSarrius Member, Beta Testers Posts: 1,682 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited July 2014
    I do not believe that Fire has the level of complexity that either of you insist, but that is likely experience bias talking. There's very little tracking involved in Fire style (and it is actually not really necessary anyways) - you track your attunement, your flamecircle ticks, and (if you want to be fancy) your target's current HP vs. their max HP. You pull the trigger on your big Lavablast when you think it will bring you a win. You don't have to deliver any afflictions. You aren't making stacks. You aren't trying to delay cures. Any affliction you cause is purely tertiary and contributes to whatever else your Hunters or Bards are setting up and you don't have to care what it is you are delivering because it doesn't matter for what you are doing. This significantly eases the burden of playing a Fire Mage, because afflictions mattering to you opens up a huge berth of complication that would justify complaints of complexity.

    Mage 3.0's attunement system is not any harder to understand than 2.0's - it is a heat meter that goes from cold (water/earth) to hot (fire/air). Like 2.0, you develop it by pushing your buttons. Unlike 2.0's, you actually have to make decisions. Decisions breed complication, for sure, but complication can be eased or eliminated by providing a clear path - and your path as a Fire Mage is difficult to make any more clearer, to be honest. Your 'mediocre damage' comes out hard and fast with very little setup that actually feeds off of other people's contributions, and 'mediocre' damage can add up VERY fast in a shardfall. You are still very relevant in that sector, and you don't care about the duel sector as far as I can tell, so what is the problem with that being the end result for you? Every class is separated in to styles, and most of the classes in Imperian have a lot of chaff skills - a complaint that you pay hundreds to use a quarter of your skills was always going to be the case anyways. Some abilities have been phased out because team combat cannot support/afford to use them.

    EDIT: You used to detonate those people because your class was not balanced or designed intelligently. 5 attunement in every element was an inevitability, not a possibility. Your attunement was basically a free collar. Your spells did a lot of damage that was harder to resist than physical damage. Your class had zero actual decision making involved in playing it, which made it 'easy' to ignore the nuance that the design intended you to pick up on and take advantage of.
    <div>Message #2062&nbsp; Sent By: (imperian)&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 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>
  • KhizanKhizan Member Posts: 2,648 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @Skye

    If you are breaking the coding/system, the problem is almost certainly that Risca is getting too complex with the stuff he helps you set up. An ideal setup for this kind of stuff is basically impossible to break because it's just a dead simple series of attacks.

    /alias {attack1} {cast spell1 spell2 at $target}
    /alias {attack2} {cast spell3 spell4 at $target} 
    etc etc etc

    When I teach non-combatants how to start getting involved in fights, I don't go "Here's a complicated system for your offense". I go for something more along the lines of "This is admittedly sub-optimal but it's simple and idiot-proof and it's effective in groups. All you have to do is repeat this sequence of attacks over and over."

    You don't need an automated offense and all this complex crap to be a valuable member of a team, no matter what your profession is. Your offense might not be optimal; that does not mean it is useless.

    @Bellentine

    You were detonating people because old Mage and the attunement system it used were overpowered past the point of repair; that's why the class got a complete mechanical revamp. I promise you that there's a fire method out there that's well within your grasp, code-wise, but it will not be as idiot-simple as "push button until unhealable attunements let you nuke somebody to death".

    You are going to have to make choices about what you do based on attunement levels, enemy health, charge levels, and other such things, but you do not need to code to do that; you can manage that with highlights, your eyes, and straightforward aliases. It will take practice and thought, but it is well within your grasp.


    "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."

  • SkyeSkye Member Posts: 100 ✭✭✭
    It's not Risca. I break stuff from other people too. He has been amazingly patient over the years. Maybe it's just me. Maybe it's unrealistic to want to be able to play Imperian or games like it without having some knowledge or understanding of coding and stuff. I just feel like I got by before and now not so much. Not because of lack of fantastic support out there, but because before I could at least feel like I was capable of doing it some of it myself. I could read the skill and all I needed to do was this. Now I have to do this to make this work whilst tracking this if I want to do that. I just wanted to support Bellentine so that she (and maybe the powers that be as well) know that it's not just her that feels like that. Maybe I'm a terrible example though.
    ** Yes, we're aware of the problems. Please do NOT use any HELP files at the moment.**.
    ** And don't try them now just see if they're really broken. **.
    ** Or credit conversion. Try not to do anything much right now. **.
    ** Don't panic, normal service will be restored as soon as possible. For now, enjoy the wonders of conversation. **.
    *** We will be rebooting in about 60 seconds ***.
    ** Don't panic. Just...stay close to your rosaries **.
    ** Monetary offers for Salvation accepted. **.
  • SarriusSarrius Member, Beta Testers Posts: 1,682 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited July 2014
    You aren't a terrible example, but I feel like both of you are overcomplicating the matter for yourselves. As Khizan said, most Mages could just get by in shardfalls with a very linear offense of two - three buttons. If your leaders were to give you a job, it should play to your strengths in that regard - they should make you just mash your fire spells until 5 attunement, lavablast to dump it, then repeat that same process again. That is a foolproof plan for you to contribute, because your buttons consist of 'cast firewreathe flamebolt otherfirespell dude' and 'cast penetration lavablast dude'. You press the first one 2 - 3 times, then press the other one. Repeat until your target is crispy. This is not a bad plan, either, because it does damage and that is the point. Is it boring? Possibly, but starting from the most basic principles or setups is how you become 'not awful'. After all..

    image
    <div>Message #2062&nbsp; Sent By: (imperian)&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 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>
  • ChronusChronus Member Posts: 46 ✭✭
    Here is what I did to kill everyone in the beta with Fire: 

    Use airwreathe+bloodboil+heat (or any combination you want, just use bloodboil because it does slightly more damage than the other fire spells) and max out air and fire. When they are both at max you hit the target with firecircle and then drain followed by penetration or regular (depending on crystal charges) bloodboil+heat. This will take them under or near the magic mark where firecircle will tick without using fire attunement. In a team fight you will without problems have them under that mark by this time.

    Follow that up by maxing fire using firewreathe+bloodboil+heat and then at max fire just dump penetration lavablast. Didn't kill them? Repeat the process because they will die shortly after.

    This was done with me being Wise and I had Diadem to help me out. That was it. So if you're loaded with +int and collars you'll wreck people with that combo.

    You can do this without any sort of tracking, just highlight the attunement lines and have 2-3 macros with the different attacks ready to go.

    The only thing that'd be different in a team fight is that you need to coordinate who is dishing out the firecircle so it don't reset. If you're not on that job, you just dump drain and penetration lavablast at max fire and air. Most likely you can go with just fire to max into lavablast and skip air in a team fight, depending on the target and situation. 

  • BellentineBellentine Member Posts: 56 ✭✭
    You mention choices, I agree.  I've made mine.  Good luck chaps.
  • AakrinAakrin Member Posts: 84 ✭✭
    To be fair to the other mages, you AM guys are over the top tanky. Even with several people on you, I half the time can't get you below the threshold to make firecircle not cost attunement. Which I don't even really understand, considering the offensive artifacts I have. The tank is strong in your circle I guess.

    @skye - cast penetration bloodboil batter (target)      Just do that and pretend its staffcast. You can also do - cast numbness shake batter (target) if you want to be more supportive in combat.
  • IniarIniar Member Posts: 3,213 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited July 2014
    I wrote a whole bunch of crap, then made it more succinct:

    1. yes, it is unfair to expect the general cohort of players to understand how to code a complex system
    2. yet because I wanted to be contributory to my team, I took the time out to learn how to code
    3. this may not be feasible for all people, but it's something you need to recognise, that if you won't code, you will inherently be -a lot- worse than someone who takes the time to - if all you can muster up are simple aliases, then do not expect to come away victorious at all
    4. the solution is -not- to make the class brain-stupid, like Mage 2.0 was, because
    a. it gives you a false sense of 'accomplishment'
    b. it infuriates people who have dedicated considerable time/energy into their combat

    5. The solution would be for player-coders like Azefel and myself to release an API that lets players do this:

    myqueue = [
    " icewreathe : sunallergy : stupidity : +a_water<=3 ",
    " quickcast : sunallergy : impatience : #charges > 3",
    " etherpunch : sunallergy : impatience ",
    " quickcast : sunallergy : nausea : no-herb ",
    so on and so forth,
    ]

    This lets you bypass learning how to code complex IF ELSE END things, but it lets you play around with different combat scenarios and rapidly gain feedback so you are in actuality learning combat and not coding. It becomes complicated, but not "irrelevant" (as much as coding is irrelevant) to enjoying the game.

    edit: my last edit was still ranty - please, just learn how to code the basic building blocks and how to do basic troubleshooting - goes a long way.
    wit beyond measure is a Sidhe's greatest treasure
  • EldrethEldreth Member Posts: 430 ✭✭✭✭
    Maybe it's unrealistic to want to be able to play Imperian or games like it without having some knowledge or understanding of coding and stuff.

    I think the word coding has become so watered down that it is used when talking about both lua scripting and making a basic trigger in your client of choice. It is entirely realistic to want to play Imperian without having some knowledge of coding in the more accurate sense of the word. The issue is that the current combat environment does, more so than several years ago, require you have knowledge of stuff - the basic cause-and-effect and synergy of how your skills can work together to achieve glory. This isn't a knock against any of the concerns here, but I don't think it is realistic to expect to be able to fully participate without spending the time to figure out either. There is no getting around the fact that you need to do homework with some of these classes - fortunately, there are plenty of people who are willing to help in this department.

    My litmus test for a class that works is that I should be able to invest the time in figuring out how all of my skills are supposed to fit together and I should be able to use them the way they were designed without knowledge of any computer languages or even advanced client understanding (which very well might require said computer language). The lowest common denominator should be the web client- if I wouldn't realistically be able to pick up a profession, spend a fair amount of time reading help files and picking peoples' brains, and then use my offense the way it is meant to be used by hitting the "Play Now" button, then there is an issue (here's looking at you, affliction tracking). I just don't see this problem with mage, which carries the "multiple play styles" tag (an idea that works better in theory than practice...see summoner...) and would pass the litmus test.
    “We abjure labels. We fight for money and an indefinable pride. The politics, the ethics, the moralities, are irrelevant."
    image
  • EldrethEldreth Member Posts: 430 ✭✭✭✭
    edited July 2014
    To be fair to the other mages, you AM guys are over the top tanky.

    AM has, and will always have, the greatest across-the-board, ready-to-play-out-of-the-box synergy between offensive and defensive capabilities. Frankly, the reason I haven't switched over to play with mage like Cassius or Risca is that some of these dudes you have to kill three times thanks to the significant advantage that is redemption in today's team environment - and no group in their right mind would try to kill zombies without a Daryl.
    :ar!

    ps - Oops..to get in my pre-coffee snark comment of the day:

    Here is what I did to kill everyone in the beta with Fire:

    Killing an AFK beta target at Springs has almost no bearing on how things work in the actual game.
    “We abjure labels. We fight for money and an indefinable pride. The politics, the ethics, the moralities, are irrelevant."
    image
  • CassiusCassius Member, Beta Testers Posts: 607 ✭✭✭
    edited July 2014
    It's exactly like summoner in that the damage route is much greater than the affliction route in almost almost all cases an that no one will really persue/play affliction mage (see number of affliction summoners).

    In theory, it looks a good concept. In practice, I think your hard-pressed to approach the finisher damage of fire even though it's MUCH more work/effort <- this is an issue in my book. It seems to me that the current mix of affliction/damage spells make it very difficult to get/keep someone at a low enough health that decompose could be a finisher (without high damage arties). I haven't spent a lot of time on it and admittedly my add tracking isn't top tier, but I'm not positive time/effort will change my mind on it. It seems to me, the water route should have higher damage on some of the regular spells since the finisher doesn't scale with artifacts and maybe make those skills decrease fire attunement so they couldn't be stacked with the fire damage route. How many people/how much effort went into the water route? Or was the beta as fire focused as it seems?

    Long post/almost done: I do think it's sad that Mage has lost considerable flavor. You used to be able to be able to kill with any/all elements which was cool. I wish some of that would have been saved while fixing attunement.

    Edit: why oh why mobile forums
  • ChronusChronus Member Posts: 46 ✭✭
    Of course not, it was just a way to say that you can actually kill someone with Fire. Anyone using a shield or any kind of defensive abilities will of course survive longer just like you do vs any other profession. The combo is however the most effective way to play Fire after these changes, which is just pure straight up damage and I wanted to share it so others can use it and see on their own that the Mage isn't that complicated and hopefully have a bit more success.
  • IniarIniar Member Posts: 3,213 ✭✭✭✭✭
    *cough cough* Defiler flavour *cough* :D :P :D
    wit beyond measure is a Sidhe's greatest treasure
  • EldrethEldreth Member Posts: 430 ✭✭✭✭

    Cassius said:
    It's exactly like summoner in that the damage route is much greater than the affliction route in almost almost all cases an that no one will really persue/play affliction mage (see number of affliction summoners).
    To illustrate a point I have said in-game, please refer to this :26 clip of Eldreth "damage" summoner fighting Iluv "affliction" summoner.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I_Ds2ytz4o
    “We abjure labels. We fight for money and an indefinable pride. The politics, the ethics, the moralities, are irrelevant."
    image
  • IniarIniar Member Posts: 3,213 ✭✭✭✭✭
    I'm struggling with affliction summoner in anything but Fast. I wish Tarot was EQ based.
    wit beyond measure is a Sidhe's greatest treasure
  • ChronusChronus Member Posts: 46 ✭✭
    As far as Water goes, I think it is a good alternative for the more advanced user and a way to handle high health people with artifacts that you just can't kill with Fire. Because Fire for Mage, like any other damage route strategy for any profession struggles with that kind of target if you're not having damage artifacts to counter the targets defensive artifacts. 

    In a team fight Fire is still king but in a 1v1 you can go with the Water route if you want (though if you team up with a Runeguard dishing out a lot of toxins, you might want to try out Water because ouch ouch so many physical affs). It just takes a bit longer to setup because you need to stick at least 3-5 physical afflictions depending on the target as long as you keep Icicles up and running, which will be a big part of the damage you do with Water.
  • EoghanEoghan Member, Immortal Posts: 1,073 mod
    edited July 2014
    The mage discussion has been (sloppily, because I don't really know how to use these forums) split to here.

    I want to reiterate that this thread is not for combat and balance discussions. It is intended predominantly for quality-of-life changes to Imperian that make day to day playing the game easier. There is room for discussion, but it is not the primary intent - more prolonged discussion on a topic should be split off into its own thread. This is also not the thread to air general grievances about the game - that should be in a different thread (there are a number of appropriate threads, or you can make a new one).

    I am going to start moderating this thread more heavily, and will be deleting or splitting posts that do not conform.
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  • IniarIniar Member Posts: 3,213 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Here's one:

    Instead of AB NOCTU yielding: 
    -> You do not currently possess that skill. You can use AB NOCTU FULL to view all the abilities available within it.

    Just allow it to expand to AB NOCTU FULL and append a message at the top saying: "You're on the wrong character".

    Here's one more:
    Instead of AB lists showing off a description of the skill, can we have an option (like AB NOCTU ACTUAL) which shows off the afflictions/effect in succinct format? "A burst of heat to make their head spin." could certainly be re-formatted to go "Spell | Vertigo | Taint 15" (which is what I've done with my GHELP files but like QoL kthnx bai.
    wit beyond measure is a Sidhe's greatest treasure
  • UltrixUltrix Member Posts: 288 ✭✭✭
    I'm not sure how difficult it would be to implement this as it would have to be based on your current room location, but would it be possible for the SCOUT AREA [ADJACENT] ability to tell you in which general relative direction (north, south, etc.) the neighboring area was in? 
  • EoghanEoghan Member, Immortal Posts: 1,073 mod
    edited July 2014
    Ultrix said:
    I'm not sure how difficult it would be to implement this as it would have to be based on your current room location, but would it be possible for the SCOUT AREA [ADJACENT] ability to tell you in which general relative direction (north, south, etc.) the neighboring area was in? 
    This would be possible, but would be messy* in cases where you were equidistant between two exits into the adjacent area, etc. It's doable, but I think that you can get more useful information by just attempting to path find:

    You see traces of the following areas around you.
       the Wonder Emporium
       the Western Nolmine Heights
       Ancient Sewer Ruins
       the Eastern Celidon
    [-*-]path find the Wonder Emporium
    Distance to 'Within a small square': 9 Steps.
    Path: se, se, e, se, s, se, s, sw, e

    *(It wouldn't actually be messy, it would just pick one, but you get the idea)
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  • UltrixUltrix Member Posts: 288 ✭✭✭
    Eoghan said:
    Ultrix said:
    I'm not sure how difficult it would be to implement this as it would have to be based on your current room location, but would it be possible for the SCOUT AREA [ADJACENT] ability to tell you in which general relative direction (north, south, etc.) the neighboring area was in? 
    This would be possible, but would be messy* in cases where you were equidistant between two exits into the adjacent area, etc. It's doable, but I think that you can get more useful information by just attempting to path find:

    You see traces of the following areas around you.
       the Wonder Emporium
       the Western Nolmine Heights
       Ancient Sewer Ruins
       the Eastern Celidon
    [-*-]path find the Wonder Emporium
    Distance to 'Within a small square': 9 Steps.
    Path: se, se, e, se, s, se, s, sw, e

    *(It wouldn't actually be messy, it would just pick one, but you get the idea)
    Right, but not every area is path-findable, particularly where you enter via special exits, so you can't always rely on path find. For something like what you have above, I was thinking like:

    You see traces of the following areas around you.
       the Wonder Emporium - to the southeast
  • EoghanEoghan Member, Immortal Posts: 1,073 mod
    Any method that was used to determine the direction of an area from your location would do so based on connected exits - there really isn't an easy way to account for special exits along the path.

    For other areas that path find doesn't work for (but that there is a directly connected path), file a bug. There are still some areas that need to be fixed up to be path-findable (though few).
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  • IniarIniar Member Posts: 3,213 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Can we have a READNEWS STAVENN NEXT?

    wit beyond measure is a Sidhe's greatest treasure
  • SelthisSelthis Member Posts: 526 ✭✭✭✭✭
    If you have all your sections up to date you can  just RN and it will cycle through the sections to the first unread.
  • VerexaVerexa Member Posts: 132 ✭✭✭
    Would it be possible to make the unleash balance messages less spammy by referring to the demons simply by their name without their titles? For example, from "You are again able to unleash Jy'Barrak Golgotha, Demon Lord." to "You are again able to unleash Golgotha."
  • SelthisSelthis Member Posts: 526 ✭✭✭✭✭
    I know Aetolia has it, but is there any chance we can get a searchable thing for keywords in our news? So nsearch announce <word> would return a list of articles that have that word in them?
  • EoghanEoghan Member, Immortal Posts: 1,073 mod
    edited August 2014
    Iniar said: Can we have a READNEWS STAVENN NEXT?

    As Selthis mentioned, READNEXT/RN shows the next post in the first news section with unread posts, if any. You can also include a list of sections to EXCLUDE (READNEXT MEETS, for example, would read the next unread post that
    is not in the meets section). I'm not sure why this is an exclusion list instead of an inclusion list, but that's how it has always been. We can change that, if there's interest in having that changed.

    Selthis said:
    I know Aetolia has it, but is there any chance we can get a searchable thing for keywords in our news? So nsearch announce <word> would return a list of articles that have that word in them?
    With the way news is currently set up in Imperian, this isn't possible without significantly lagging the game. It would be a not-insignificant amount of work to convert to a different way to handle the news, so this hasn't been done yet. It's possible, but isn't likely in the near future.
    Verexa said:
    Would it be possible to make the unleash balance messages less spammy by referring to the demons simply by their name without their titles? For example, from "You are again able to unleash Jy'Barrak Golgotha, Demon Lord." to "You are again able to unleash Golgotha."
    This is possible, but having just talked to the folks up here about it we generally agree that we like the flavor of those messages. Most aren't too long, and with most wrapwidths they should be fine. Is this something that you really feel is needed?
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