Autocuring - a basic healing system

Akumu

I read the post about curing priorities today and I felt that we're going too far with this in game autocuring. I remember that people asked for something along the lines of a basic healing system before it was created, something in game that allowed people who couldn't code be able to join in on a fight and actually do a decent job at it. I repeat: Decent job. But at the current state of autocuring I start to think to myself, why should I even bother do my own system today?

I've done client side coding since about 1999 when I first started playing Achaea. I joined Imperian about a week after it opened up and have stuck around since then on several characters and I've played basically every profession except for the new revamped ones. One of the reasons I've stuck to MUD's for so long and especially IRE is the thrill of combat where you begin with learning what cures what, why certain afflictions stop others and how to counter it by both curing and attacking. Imperian is certainly killing that feeling for me with the current state of autocuring. 

Don’t get me wrong though, I love that more people can compete at a higher level thanks to in game solutions such as autocuring. But I don’t agree that it should be so advanced that it’s the one and all solution to every curing in game. Just look at other games such as Aetolia where you get this in game curing. But what’s the difference? It ticks every 3 seconds. It is not something that basically instantly throws out a cure and heals you up so you can continue with attacking.

Let me describe some main problems I have with autocuring that makes it superior to client side curing.

• It is super fast. I know it’s supposed to be a 250 millisecond delay or whatever but my tests say something else. From my point of view it looks like a timer that ticks every 250 millisecond and that means that sometimes (most of the times during my test) I get cured basically instantly after I get afflicted. From my client it takes AT LEAST 150 milliseconds due to ping and that’s on a good day. The average however is about 250-350 milliseconds AFTER I get afflicted since I send the cure at the prompt.
• Autocuring knows when a command failed and sends the command again. This is AMAZINGLY good against stupidity and aeon. What do I do in my own system? I have a timer that resets the affliction after X amount of time and resends the cure if it failed. I can’t send it again on a failed attempt such as an emote because that might have been from my attack and not my cure failing. We got the small “a” in the prompt from delayed commands from aeon though, but that’s basically useless since I send cures, if afflicted by aeon, after my attack. 
• Keeping track of every single balance at any time. I can do this with my client of course, but certainly not at the same level that autocuring can. If I’d have balances available in GMCP, this wouldn’t be a problem.
  

These are some of the main points that make autocuring superior to client side curing. So why should I use client side curing today? The only real reason would be for parrying, using special abilities such as restore automatically and of course choose the prio of defences (since that’s not done in game YET) and being able to deal with hidden afflictions in a better way other then using DIAG (since that’s not done in game YET...).

It’s scary to see that autocuring is somehow a necessary thing now and MUST be updated with sophisticated things such as prioritizing afflictions. Is that basic healing? Basic healing to me is that you in a linear fashion send out cures in an attempt to at least cure yourself and not sending herb cures if you got anorexia for example. THAT is basic healing, there’s nothing else to it. But I fear that the few of us who still make our own client side coding starts to become a minority in Imperian because basically everyone uses autocuring now and so our voices aren’t heard or cared about anymore in this new age of curing.

The side effect of doing this isn’t just positive. It requires most classes to be revamped due to autocuring and we’re going into an era where everything in game is done for you. Why should they be revamped? Because autocuring is superior in most ways to client side curing and the majority uses it now. This made some classes, especially affliction classes not as good anymore and we had to throw in buffs in some fashion. New classes focus on uncurable afflictions, building up a set of afflictions to finish you off with a HARD hitting attack or a quick instant kill with a small window to stop. We never saw this amount of uncurable affliction before autocuring.

Also look at it this way - we constantly say that 1v1 is dead and team combat is what we focus on these days due to shardfalls and obelisk fights. Then why is a perfect in game curing system needed? The focus in a battle like that is holding down targets with writhes and then dealing damage until they die. No system can help you with that and so I don’t know why we need to request more and more and more features for an already excellent in game curing system.

Autocuring in Imperian is far more superior to any other IRE game, as far as I know. Other games have a basic level of curing where you like in Aetolia learn an ability in Survival and that makes you able to cure on a 3 second tick. That’s basic healing but it’s not the thing you want to use forever, you actually need to learn how to do it on your own if you want to compete with the high level combatants. 

My suggestion is therefore that autocuring should be linear, it should of course put up defences, cure you from anything as long as you have the cure available, but it should be at a far slower rate such as a 3 second ticks. Because THAT to me is basic healing and that’s what would put all not so experienced combatants get a chance to go right into it and learn from there. But from there, if you decide you want to do more, you should actually get a friend to help you or make your own client side healing system. 

Clients also need to get some help if you want to keep autocuring on par with them. Such as a notification if I failed to cure something from stupidity and a way to track balances through GMCP. 

I hope that this large post open up your eyes and that you look at it from a different perspective. We can’t solve everything with in game solutions that goes beyond the ability of what clients can do. It’s like cheating to me. I love seeing more people in combat these days, even if they’re still not enough, but this is starting to get a bit silly. 

Azefel

Autocuring never should have been anything more than basic eat/drink/smoke/apply for newbs to not die to bashing. Anyway, too late for that now.

Can there please be a config option to gag the autocuring priority switching message ("You have set the '________' affliction to the _ priority.") because it's really annoying when I do actually want to make use of this feature. Sure I can gag it on my end but I imagine it'd be better for both me and the server if it didn't have to echo it every time in the first place.

Gurn

No. Autocuring is one of the best things to happen to the game, and is what helps an already small population get a couple new players.

Do you remember when you started Imperian? It was bloody difficult. No maps, no curing, nothing. Just to play the game you had to go learn Lua or something. It was intimidating, it sucked the fun out of things, and you hated being constantly killed because your alias for 'outr maidenhair;eat maidenhair' didn't work so well.

Are people who code their own systems a minority? Hell yes, and they've always been a huge minority. Sorry to burst your bubble, but ever since Whyte's came around, which was even since I started playing six years ago, there's always been that out there. Sure, it wasn't perfect, but there has almost always been that fallback which worked pretty well. Did it have issues? Yeah, sure. Does autocuring have issues? Yup. I'd even go to argue Whyte's was better, as of the moment, due to easier customization options and such. I still use a hybrid Whyte's/autocuring system. I mean, autocuring is still horrible at curing aeon.

To say affliction classes aren't as good anymore is a false statement, I think. With curing balances lessened, this easily makes up for a good curing system-- Sure, you can no longer roll around spamming iodine/bromine/impatience/hemotoxin/mercury and instantly lock people because their curing systems can't keep up, but that doesn't make affliction classes bad. It just means you put whatever effort you were going to put into making a defensive system into an offensive one instead. 

What it comes down to is that autocuring isn't about the big folk who can magick code out of their fingers and make ridiculous systems. It's for the little guys who want to play a game called Imperian but are intimidated as hell by the coding. They want to participate in shardfalls, obelisk battles, maybe even a little 1v1 arena combat, but don't want to die the moment they step in. Does autocuring make the game more accessible? Yes, in so many different ways.

Does it make the game less accessible to more experienced coders? Anything but, I'd say. It allows you to make tweaks to curing for when you want to prioritize curing and the like, but now you can focus on offence. There aren't a huge number of classes out there that still can't keep up with autocuring. All it does is pit you against a good defence, which, if you have a good offence, you should be breaking through regardless. Combat, I think, should've never been about "How well can I exploit this guy's coding abilities" but rather "How well do I understand combat in Imperian."

Sarciossis

I can see both arguments in this issue, but I have to agree with Gurn. Autocuring is serving it's purpose. But, if anyone can walk me through this priority curing stuff, I'd appreciate it. Message me here or in game.

Delrayne

Autocuring definitely helps more than it harms. You can chalk it up to "Client Siders" being the minority now, or you can just chalk it up to letting EVERYONE into the game with a free buy in.

....What was that!? You mean Imperian came out with a non-buy in combat mechanic!? GET READY FOR THE APOCOLYPSE!

All kidding aside, i'd much rather see a game with a good healing system that everyone has access to. The population is already small enough, and with the constant fluctuation of "the flavor of the month" circle swapping,  even shardfalls rarely induce conflict anymore. Because there just isn't enough people on the opposing sides to make it a challenge. Now cut those numbers buy 75% if you take AUTOCURING out of the equation.

To be honest with you, I'd much rather see even more AUTOCURING customization. Be able to change priorities around, pick which defenses to keep up and which to do only on login, and a plethora of other things. Some might say that'd be to much in a server side curing system, I say it creates diversity by allowing people being able to choose different priorites, thus allowing for varying types of combat.

Akumu

Someone completely new to the game would use autocuring for sure, but what would they learn about the game from that point? You’d learn your offensive abilities and that’s about it. There’s no charm, at least not for me, when you just focus on your offense and nothing more. It’s like playing an MMO and you’re followed by a support class healing you constantly while you attack people instead of using your own abilities in order to heal you. And what about those who can’t code a good offense? Two new players going up against each other will not get a kill when both are curing perfectly automatically. So now we’re still at the point where you need to learn to code at least some, just as it always has been like and which is one of the charm with IRE games. Otherwise I think we could just go with the old model of sending a KILL command, sit back and just watch who wins. Highest level and best gear will win. Also, just having SOME classes, as mentioned, being not able to keep up with autocuring is wrong. Why are you focusing on making autocuring better before fixing those classes at that point? Let me finish with this; what is the point of afflictions that can be cured at all if we’re planning to make autocuring the one and only way to cure in game? Because really, then it’s just about delaying something to setup another thing and not about outsmarting your opponent and find their weakness. If everyone cures perfectly you could just remove afflictions at the current state and go with timed afflictions that build up for something else and that’s how you setup a combo and a kill. I doubt anyone wants that though, because that means we’re going to see such a linear combat scene that we know the exact outcome before we go into the fight.

Delrayne

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy coding just as much as the next person. I far much prefer coding my offense as opposed to my healing system though. This could be due in large part because I've never had a REALLY successful healing system. I've had one or two that were decent enough to get me through a few fights, but outside of that, they have all been crap.

So let's just say that over 8 years I've tried to make a total of six healing systems, two came out somewhat decent, 4 horrid. If each system were only just 5k lines total of code, which I believe to be a small amount. That's 30k lines of code created and scrapped from inefficiency. Now lets assume that it takes me 10 days at a minimum of 4 hours a day to get to that somewhat working 5k line point. I've just spent 40 hours, of doing nothing but coding/testing/debugging/getting into actual combat to see it fail more/and coding some more. 40 HOURS! without me participating in combat, bashing, or doing anything outside of my city/council. No offense, but that just isn't fun on a game level.

Now imagine a new player going through that process for the first time, who doesn't know the first thing about coding, outside of z/cMud's help manual. Which to someone who's never coded before looks like hieroglyphics. AUTOCURING is the answer to their prayers. And guess what? they don't have to go looking around on the forums and pay for someone else's that may or may not be top notch, or to find some outdated mudbot, or learn how to connect to imperian using mudbot with whatever client they use. Now it's all just right there for them. They were going to get it anyway, now they just don't have to buy it like they will skills and artifacts.

As far as the classes go, there are plenty of threads arguing which legacy class gets the next upgrade. Join in on one of those.

Per your final paragraph. If you allow customization of AUTOCURING'S priority lists, then it won't become the ONLY way to cure in the game, because many people will have different priorities, so you'll still have to outsmart your opponent when you see that they heal in a certain way to stop that method of killing.

Selthis

@Akumu: I'm honestly curious.  How different is this in your eyes from Vadi's system in Achaea or Whyte's or Acropolis being released?

Gurn

Because autocuring isn't perfect, and if you just let autocuring run, you will die. Against two newbies slugging at each other, it's sufficient. Any more than that, for when people actually have a method to kill each other, you have to throw in little things here and there to figure out how to properly defend against a profession. Autocuring isn't as powerful as you're claiming it to be. If I just sit and let autocuring do its thing against Iluv, I will die. If you don't parry correctly against Septus, you will die. If you don't watch for overwhelm against Ellen, you will die.

You learn how to cure properly because you will die time and time again if you rely on basic autocuring. You learn how each affliction works, how each cure balance works and the like. It is not the be all and end all of everything.

Far from a linear combat scene, it makes it so you have to dissect combat more, work more theory than code. You have to figure out what makes each thing tick, and how everything works. That's how Imperian combat is becoming now, rather than "knowing the outcome" of each battle.

Ahkan

What Garryn bot does is set an amazing baseline for people to be exposed to all facets of the game and not get steamrolled for being new. G-bot is probably the best thing to happen to Imperian since it opened. About six years ago, there was a list of 10 people who actively fought. That list nowadays is probably 40+. From a player standpoint, there is so much more to do now when people aren't playing head-in-the-sand. From a business standpoint, that's 20 people who might not have dropped dough to upgrade their text lightning.

The high bar of "skill" you're talking about is still there. It's just shifted from being able to tweak your client to being able to tweak garrynbot (and your client). A good example is that Sarrius caught me in chain transfix because G-bot thinks that deaf > blind. I read how G-bot worked, manually adjusted the queue in combat and put Sarrius in a why-am-I-losing-balance-and-ahkan-isn't-transfixed chain. The people who are able to manipulate garryn-bot to compensate for it's short fallings (predictability) are still going to have a leg or two up on the people who don't dedicate the time to understanding what they're using to cure.

On the flip side, Garrynbot was a death-blow to facerolly affliction offenses (RIP: Demonic circa 2006). This is a good thing. People can't get away with two toxins and call themselves skilled fighters. You have to sit down, do your homework and be able to utilize a toxin queue that capitalizes on the healing method your victim chooses to employ. If it's garrynbot, you can pull off a toxin vivisect (assuming your sword isn't trash). If you're an Assassin, Azefel and Iluv have demonstrated that the longer you fight an Assassin with G-bot, the less likely you are to survive. Planning and know how are always going to be solid counters to automated curing because of predictability. That 'skill' you were talking about here just got moved from "code healing system" to "code offensive system."

As far as class design goes, I'm one of the more vocal "wtf" on the Demonic side. I'm going to step out of my river of tears and defend Garryn.  Imperian is a copy, direct ripoff, unholy clone of Achaea. There's a lot of legacy mechanics that are floating around that range from "neat" to "absolute crap." There's a laundry list of broken **** in the queue to fix and they also have to balance releasing new shinies for us to ADD over and all bandwagon to. If you don't want to man up to the challenge of rolling old-and-busted against Garryn-bot, don't. There's a lot of modern classes out there that actually crush G-bot.

Ahkan

@Gurn  G-bot cures aeon like a dream. Where you're probably having trouble with it is that you have aeon -and- a priority 1 or priority 2 affliction, which gets healed before aeon. You should be able to overcome that now.

Juran

Gurn said:

If I just sit and let autocuring do its thing against Iluv, I will die. If you don't parry correctly against Septus, you will die. If you don't watch for overwhelm against Ellen, you will die.

Who is Ellen?

Gurn

@Gurn  G-bot cures aeon like a dream. Where you're probably having trouble with it is that you have aeon -and- a priority 1 or priority 2 affliction, which gets healed before aeon. You should be able to overcome that now.

Well... Probably how my system runs then, that makes autocuring not like aeon.

Akumu

The difference between releasing Vadi’s, Whyte’s or anyone else’s system is that it is client side and has all the side effects that come with it. It’s not nearly as good as what autocuring is at knowing exactly what is going on. Detecting a missed command by stupidity as mentioned and having to deal with a slight delay due to ping. That’s gone with autocuring at its current state. Besides, Whyte’s system quickly got outdated due to his inactivity, Vadi’s cost credits and if there’s other systems out there, they most likely are a cheap free version passed around by buddies. Something that I stated before that I don’t mind being available. 

Putting 40 hours into coding a system that turned out not working is worthless? In the usual lazy gamers eyes, most likely. In the way IRE combat works, no it most likely was not. You most likely picked up quite a few things during that time about curing, what does what and what has what weakness and so on. Besides... 40 hours over a time period of 8 years? That’s not much at all.

If we’re going the route of “I don’t want to do anything on my own because it’s time consuming and might be worthless in the end”, I’d like to see automatic bashing being created so I can type AUTOBASHING ON and don’t have to think about the level and gold grind. But that’d be silly, right?

And of course, autocuring isn’t perfect. I’ve never said that. I do however want to bring up  some points that make it damn near perfect and if it’s continuing on this route, we will get every feature that a very complex client side system has/had, except it’s server side and knows everything that a client does not. THAT is the real problem and if you want to make sure client systems will be kept as an option for the advanced players, you need to make it possible for clients to get the exact same information that autocuring has. 

Another example; the config for separator was one of those features that autocuring brought in. You had always been forced to go through the process of sending a command followed by a prompt and suddenly an ingame curing system could send several commands between prompts, instantly. No one understood that it was an advantage at first but finally it was addressed and now clients can actually compete with autocuring again. 

I don’t think we needed this last featured. It was already a very good system as it was, with some really good advantages over client side systems, which it still has. Being able to prioritize afflictions with autocuring closed so many gaps that it had - gaps that it should have had because it should only be a basic healing system to help new players out, not the seasoned oldtime players who should already know either how to code it on their own or at least know someone who can hand them or sell them a client side system.

Like I said before, we’re starting to see some timed uncurable afflictions coming into the game. We got really hard hitting combos that are based on putting a series of those and also hidden afflictions in. Why do they exist? Because they are cool and new thinking? No, because we got autocuring that easily outpace client side curing - something we used to base our skills upon and it certainly wasn’t anything wrong with it back then. So now we need something that it can’t really do anything about in order to kill people. That is why “legacy classes” suffer today, because they still rely on the curable and none hidden afflictions that autocuring is strong against or they simply don’t have the speed required to afflict or damage in order to kill. That is why we start to see uncurable and hidden afflictions pop out all of a sudden, to actually break autocuring. 

You’re all starting to go away from my initial point though. That autocuring is supposed to enable people to enter combat as a new player but with time should start to look at client side systems because they are superior. I doubt any of you defending autocuring thinks in those terms anymore. I think you’re all just focused on making autocuring better so that you don’t have to do it on your own.

I’d like to hear someone telling me the reason why they use a client side system today and why it’s superior to autocuring, beside putting up defences that are missing out from autocuring, using automatic parry and beside the “I enjoy coding” reason. I doubt anyone can give a good argument as to why you actually should use a client side system today at all.

Plus I don’t want to play a certain class because it’s better against autocuring at this current date. I want to play a class that I like or find interesting and that has some kind of RP that’s intriguing. 

Ahkan

I'd use a client side system because:
-I can customize and tweak it
-It wouldn't have the exact same priority as G-bot so I'd be immune to the flavor of the month.

I used garrynbot because:
-It's portable and I can access it anywhere
-It's better than 99% of the systems out there
-It's faster than anything I would use.
-It keeps me alive when I lag.

Juran

Akumu said:

I’d like to hear someone telling me the reason why they use a client side system today and why it’s superior to autocuring, beside putting up defences that are missing out from autocuring, using automatic parry and beside the “I enjoy coding” reason. I doubt anyone can give a good argument as to why you actually should use a client side system today at all.

Dynamic priorities. It's niche, but the beta version of Empire3 that I'm not using yet shifts priorities around based on the conditions of the fight. If I don't have purge balance, it won't prioritize hemotoxin as highly. Shyness fighting a noctu is more important than shyness fighting an assassin.

You will never, ever get that out of autocuring, no matter how good it gets. At the very least you will need linear client side triggers that change priorities. You can argue that this isn't a big advantage, that it doesn't really matter - and you would have an argument worth making. But it's one reason why I personally spend so much time coding

Menoch

Plus I don’t want to play a certain class because it’s better against autocuring at this current date. I want to play a class that I like or find interesting and that has some kind of RP that’s intriguing.

Then you are playing the Imperian of no time close to now.

Delrayne

Akumu said:

The difference between releasing Vadi’s, Whyte’s or anyone else’s system is that it is client side and has all the side effects that come with it. It’s not nearly as good as what autocuring is at knowing exactly what is going on. Detecting a missed command by stupidity as mentioned and having to deal with a slight delay due to ping. That’s gone with autocuring at its current state. Besides, Whyte’s system quickly got outdated due to his inactivity, Vadi’s cost credits and if there’s other systems out there, they most likely are a cheap free version passed around by buddies. Something that I stated before that I don’t mind being available.

So lets just go ahead and increase the already steep buy in to Imperian combat.

Putting 40 hours into coding a system that turned out not working is worthless? In the usual lazy gamers eyes, most likely. In the way IRE combat works, no it most likely was not. You most likely picked up quite a few things during that time about curing, what does what and what has what weakness and so on. Besides... 40 hours over a time period of 8 years? That’s not much at all.

Go back and read, that's 40 hours over ten days...not 8 years. Multiply that by six and you get 240. That's 240 active hours on the game doing nothing but coding/testing/debugging/trigger farming/etc... Regardless, the point is it's taking your precious hobby time to do a menial task that could be offered via IRE instead paying for someone else to do it.

If we’re going the route of “I don’t want to do anything on my own because it’s time consuming and might be worthless in the end”, I’d like to see automatic bashing being created so I can type AUTOBASHING ON and don’t have to think about the level and gold grind. But that’d be silly, right?

And of course, autocuring isn’t perfect. I’ve never said that. I do however want to bring up  some points that make it damn near perfect and if it’s continuing on this route, we will get every feature that a very complex client side system has/had, except it’s server side and knows everything that a client does not. THAT is the real problem and if you want to make sure client systems will be kept as an option for the advanced players, you need to make it possible for clients to get the exact same information that autocuring has.

I'd be fine with that.

I’d like to hear someone telling me the reason why they use a client side system today and why it’s superior to autocuring, beside putting up defences that are missing out from autocuring, using automatic parry and beside the “I enjoy coding” reason. I doubt anyone can give a good argument as to why you actually should use a client side system today at all.

Being able to track, check for, or test masked afflictions to name one...It's the reason why I decided to take a stab at coding a system again. And yes, that means right now as we are debating this thread I'm working on my own, even though I'm defending AUTOCURING

Plus I don’t want to play a certain class because it’s better against autocuring at this current date. I want to play a class that I like or find interesting and that has some kind of RP that’s intriguing. 

Juran

Akumu said:

And of course, autocuring isn’t perfect. I’ve never said that. I do however want to bring up  some points that make it damn near perfect and if it’s continuing on this route, we will get every feature that a very complex client side system has/had, except it’s server side and knows everything that a client does not. THAT is the real problem and if you want to make sure client systems will be kept as an option for the advanced players, you need to make it possible for clients to get the exact same information that autocuring has. 

That's why the aeon/retardation queue was added to the prompt. There aren't many things that autocuring knows that you don't, and none at all that spring to mind.

Garryn

I'll just say that an important factor for me is that we're running a game here, not a coding competition. If something is crucial to be able to fully participate in the game (and competent curing arguably falls into this category), it should be provided by the game, rather than rely on third-party offerings. Furthermore, combat should be a competition between offensive capabilities of players, not between the specifics of their curing (although that will always play at least some role).

Speaking of Aetolia's version, I looked and theirs is running on 0.5s ticks these days, not 3s ones.

Juran

I appreciate autocuring for making this somewhat hard game accessible to more people. As long as it never gains any magic tricks that lets it do something that I can't, like curing masked afflictions without diagnosing or secondary triggers, I won't care at all.

The ability to heal through lag is a strong compelling reason to use it, as is the ease to get into it and the faster 'ping'. If any of these reasons make it more compelling than someone's home baked system, I'm largely comfortable with that.

Akumu

You can't argue anymore that changing a prio for certain affs or at certain conditions against certain classes is a problem with autocuring anymore, that feature just went live and can be done using a simple alias for each class if you'd like to. That is of course with the exception of defences (which will be available soon anyway). I've mentioned a few things that I can't do with my client side curing that the autocuring can. Namely keep track of balances that NEVER fails, which can be fixed by adding them all to GMCP, I can track balances well now but it's not nearly as on the spot as autocuring. Autocuring instantly knows if a command failed from stupidity, giving it a huge advantage versus client side curing since it's way harder to detect such failure with a client. There's also the speed advantage it has.

Like I've said, I don't think it's perfect. But it seems like it's just a matter of time before it will be. And since I don't think it's perfect, I use my own client side system for now - something I enjoy maintaining and tweaking as new abilities and changes are added. 

Speaking of Aetolia's version, it might be faster today but it's still linear and you can't customize it nearly as much as we can here in Imperian. It's still a basic curing system because of that and you'd want to use a client side system over it - in the long run. 

Certainly it's a good thing that autocuring exists. I love seeing more participate in combat and that's thanks to autocuring, no doubt about it. It's just that I think it's becoming too sophisticated for being what it was initially intended to be and do. 

But from the sounds of it, the plans are that autocuring will become the only thing you need one day so that you don't have to rely on third-party offerings as you say. If that's the case, it certainly takes away a lot of the charm that IRE combat gives me when I have to think on my own and make client side systems. And like I said earlier, we don't really need anything but uncurable timed afflictions and states at that point since it will get cured through in game means any way.

Gurn

It's original intention was to allow a lower buy-in and learning curve for new players. It does that beautifully, by letting people focus on the difficult offensive part of Imperian while placing less(not none!) emphasis on the defensive side.

How is that bad?

And I don't know, the charm of Imperian comes from when I've tweaked my offence enough to bust through each individual profession's weaknesses, the rich world that's been made for us, the players in it that I interact with(even you annoying people), and the roleplay I can have.

I don't know if it's me, but I didn't start playing Imperian because I wanted to code a lot. Though, I will admit coding's fun, but my code is all worked in my offence.

Delrayne

Akumu said:

Like I've said, I don't think it's perfect. But it seems like it's just a matter of time before it will be. And since I don't think it's perfect, I use my own client side system for now - something I enjoy maintaining and tweaking as new abilities and changes are added. 

As long as you are having fun, that's all that matters really. Client side or not.

Akumu

I don’t know why you associate client side systems with buy-ins. That was never the case for Imperian at least, since we had IMTS available for free and people even modded it so it would become updated for those who didn’t want to do it on their own. Other than that, we have plenty of people who have always helped when someone asked something about making their own curing system. So some kind of buy-in just to cure has never been the case in Imperian and if it was to you, then it was a personal choice not something you were forced to do.

Lower the learning curve, certainly. It was supposed to be possible to cure in a basic fashion in order to get into combat without the need of a client side curing system right at the start. I was all for that until it become too sophisticated. 

Let me repeat myself once again since no one seems to read what I write - or simply don’t understand what I’m saying:

I want to be able to compete with autocuring at all levels, not feel like my system is starting to become meaningless to even bother with. To get into combat you only need basic curing, the linear kind.

No other IRE game has this fully developed autocuring as far as I know and yet they still do well. So in the end, it’s not about being able to cure everything without knowing anything about it. Bringing in and keeping players is done through other means. 

If you want to change it so that client side systems are kept on par with autocuring, I’ve already suggested some changes in my earlier posts. Please start reading what I’m saying instead of picking out small parts of the text, taking it out of context and trying to defend that with claw and teeth.

Let me finish with this question; why is it acceptable that you should be able to code your offense but not your healing system? 

Gurn

Because simple combat is: Dsl gurn oxalis ciguatoxin;flare sowulu at gurn, repeat.

Simple curing is: outr maidenhair;eat maidenhair, track maidenhair, check up against priority list, focus, track heal, oop, no, don't let anything go through while we're entangled, use herb balance on blind, formaldehyde? Well better add in a random affliction here...

See the difference?

EDIT: Let's be perfectly honest here, Akumu. Are you just mad because your healing system is no longer special, or is it that you can't kill anyone? No one said you can't use it anymore, after all.

Iluv

Autocuring is also awesome for people who play outside of the US.

Akumu

See, that’s basic curing and that’s all you’d need in autocuring. That’s what I’ve been saying the whole time. But now we’re having the option to change prios which goes beyond basic healing. You’re giving autocuring the edge that client side systems had and that’s making client side systems not be favoured anymore.

I still use my system because it still has some of the features that’s not yet introduced in autocuring yet like parrying, auto restore, good defence handling and good hidden affliction handling. That’s why my own system is still special. On the flip side, I don’t have the perfect stupidity cure as autocuring, perfect control of balances or the speed a server side cure gives you.

I’m hardly mad, I simply want to bring it up since I find it being an issue that takes away a lot of the fun out of the game for me and probably others as well. To me client side systems should always have the edge, even if it’s a small one. Autocuring should be basic and should allow you to cure anything just like a basic client side system could, just not with as many features.

I realize it’s meaningless to argue this since I’m one of few today who still maintain a client side system in Imperian and Garryn already stated that we shouldn’t rely on third-party clients to compete in combat. Autocuring went in, got more features than needed and is now something that the majority use because they don’t feel the need to make a client side system anymore. Especially in a game where you go in teams rather than 1v1 and where damage and controlling the opponent is more important than outpacing their curing system. 

If autocuring didn't have the edge like I've already mentioned so many times now, I wouldn't have much of a problem with it in it's current form.

Khizan

Akumu said:

I don’t know why you associate client side systems with buy-ins. That was never the case for Imperian at least

The buy-in isn't money, though. At least, it's not just money.

The buy-in here was the opportunity cost of spending your Imperian playing time slaving away in the coding mines so that you didn't get stomped on by every dual-afflictor you ran across, or so that you'd have a health sipper that didn't need to be watched like a hawk. It was being forced to spend your playing time on something other than playing the game, even AFTER you'd already made a credit buyin.

It was, in short, being forced to learn to code to play the game with any competence. This was a terrible thing for the game, because it raised the bar for accessibility so high. Lowering that bar via autocuring has done great things for the game. 

Menoch

Autocuring doesn't stop cleave.

My point in saying that is one that is iterated to the umpteenth time by others, but a little less friendly and a little more accurate.

You can do autocuring on, and in no way is that going to prevent you from being dual break vivisected, because as you said, flaws, such as applying resto > mending while afflicted with slow salves. In that same way, it doesn't stop insta's, it doesn't teach you messages, hell. The reporting on option barely tells you anything. It isn't the end all be all, it's a good basic/starter system, that is insanely fast. Now ANYone who can log into Imperian as their first mud, spend 5 hours learning basic mud commands and style, can then go out and not die at lvl 5 to spiders in Caanae, and they can keep using the same thing all the way up to Iaat/Ebonmarrows, whatever. It doesn't make them worth piss in combat, and it doesn't make a difference for 1v1 or teams much more than Whyte's did, and prior to that, 50% of the combatants in the game were using manual heal aliases and linear triggers. And 100% of the combatants in the game pre-Whyte's would be less than 20% of the combatants now thanks to autocuring.

So, let's recap:

-Autocuring doesn't make you a better player

-Autocuring gets more players into fighting, pretty important when marketed as the PK mud of IRE

-Autocuring keeps you alive, unless your ping is really low, probably faster than your client side system you've spent ~10 years updating for tiny message/skill changes

You're making the same argument that people made with Orders, in essence. "This has been here forever and I did work on it and I'm resistant to change." Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on who you are, the times are changing, and Imperian is finally getting those changes, and instead of in fits and spurts, getting major overhauls and redesigning balances and changing gameplay all around the board. Look at what 1v1 was, look at what it is. Mostly unchanged, less emphasis by the playerbase for it, but mostly it is the same. Can you say the same for bashing, or team combat, or cults? No, because all that **** was 10 years old, and now it's the new hotness. And I'm the guy who is usually complaining about the new hotness being better than what he's got, so stop cutting into my niche.

Mathiaus

Anyone else remember how long it took to make their own system?

I definitely have benefitted from having autocuring now so I could spend more time with my fiance and 4 year old and not sit on the couch with the laptop for countless hours .

It was fun coding everything and making my own system at the time when I did have the free time but now I have real life work and real life problems I have to delve hours into, not just a fantasy world.

I will throw my hand in. and defend autocuring for the sake of being able to enjoy both worlds without sacrificing one for the other.