My state of IRE combat rant 2/21/2015

Jelaludin

I'm on vacation and it's been awhile since I wrote up a rant on the state of combat in IRE muds so here we go.  I'm putting this in ideas because while dabbling with Lusternia, I actually had an idea that I don't think I've suggested before.  If you'll bear with me, I'd like to establish a couple points before putting up that idea.

The first issue of course is the high buy-in.  Without actually getting into the fundamentals of that debate I would question whether we even have enough low-might, artifact free PvP players left in the IRE games for us to honestly assess this question.  Does that say something?

The second issue is activity.  When I played a lot several years ago, someone would die on deathsight/sense every 10-15 minutes.  To me, the lack of people engaging in PvP should be conclusive evidence that there are some major problems with the PvP game since it used to be different.

The third issue is that while the combat overhaul strikes me as a good idea because it streamlines a really complex system, I don't see it addressing the fundamental problem in Lusternia.  The fundamental problem isn't the buy-in: that could be fixed within a couple days if people wanted it done.  The fundamental problem is that everyone who cares by now knows the affliction-stacking, limb damage, hidden offs metagame like the back of their hand.  The overhaul will make things more accessible but it won't add spice for experienced players (which is practically all of them in PvP right now).

So why is team combat almost the only combat? Even though some people have this hermetic conception of 1v1 combat as having no random factors, team combat maintains its appeal because it is unpredictable and that's not so far from having randomness.  The unpredictable nature is what makes it exciting.

To finally get to my idea, one way to increase the unpredictability of a PvP game is to have each side select a "load out" before going into PvP.  As applied to Lusternia, journeying to a plane is mostly an act of typing in TRANSVERSE EARTHQUAKEPLACE.  Instead, the idea I'd like to suggest is that people prepare for their planar journey by donning an "astronaut suit" which includes a PvP load out that modifies their class.  Some load outs have advantages over others and might include consumable weapons.

An example: players A and B meet on an astrosphere.  They fight.  Being Lusternia players, as soon as A realizes that B's load out has an advantage over him, he tries to run for it.  But if the astrosphere is locked in, there's hostile mobs running around and people can't discern someone's load out until partway through their fight with them, he can't just bail as soon as he knows the other guy's load out.  If you give them some "grenades" to throw into the mix against teams and/or clouds of mobs I think that would be cool and worth trying to seek out the elusive spontaneous 1v1 macho fight.

In conclusion, it's something of a paradox that people in fantasy games tend to want 1v1, yet they want the 1v1 to be spontaneous and not a pre-arranged spar or duel.  IRE used to have that kind of romance but for a long time now I've felt this sense of defeatism; people say they don't even want it anymore, I'm not sure I believe them.  If Lusternia isn't going to think positive, 5 cities is way too many.  It's primarily a social game right now but I can't readily interact with 4/5ths of the player base.  Everyone could be in 1 city and the nexus could be a religion or something; there'd still be planar group combat but the rest of the time we could talk to each other.

If you read all that, thanks

Shaddus

...what

Elanorwen

No thanks, Guild Wars in Lusternia isn't going to fly. Unless you're talking about the impossibility to swap guild skills on the fly like we used to be able? Because that is totally a thing already... unless of course you want to go into combat without a single defense.

Ssaliss

Also, there are six cities. Just saying.

Aiyana

Just seems to me that coding all that in would be more trouble than it's worth, and would just be another feature among many that go unused.

Eritheyl

I not entirely sure what I just read, particularly this part:

Jelaludin said:

Everyone could be in 1 city and the nexus could be a religion or something; there'd still be planar group combat but the rest of the time we could talk to each other.

Just, no. If you think that you "can't interact" with people, including those from other orgs - even including those from enemy orgs - you're doing it wrong. It sounds like you're looking less for Lusternia to change and more for an entirely different game, so don't really know what else to say.

Lerad

Hey, give the kid a break. He did a great job identifying the problems until he got to the "fundamental" part. High buy in and heavy barriers of entry to combat are, indeed, big problems in Lusternia. Part of why we're overhauling combat.

Jelaludin

My bad, 6 cities.  It's a lot.  I'm in southeast Asia right now and may be moving to east Asia for work, so in my time zone there's sub-40 people online at a time spread out across 6 cities and who knows how many of those are active.  I'm going to give cross-city interaction a try but in my experience you tend to run into roadblocks and people who want to end you out for fraternizing with the enemy.  Hopefully that won't happen again but I guess we'll see.

It's true that I do love guild wars :P It's a great example of how to integrate standardized PvP into a game that doesn't have it as its main point.

Elanorwen

Jelaludin said:

My bad, 6 cities.  It's a lot.  I'm in southeast Asia right now and may be moving to east Asia for work, so in my time zone there's sub-40 people online at a time spread out across 6 cities and who knows how many of those are active.  I'm going to give cross-city interaction a try but in my experience you tend to run into roadblocks and people who want to end you out for fraternizing with the enemy.  Hopefully that won't happen again but I guess we'll see.

It's true that I do love guild wars :P It's a great example of how to integrate standardized PvP into a game that doesn't have it as its main point.

Uh, wha? I thought PvP was the main point of Guild Wars. Why would we go with their model? Never mind that certain guilds can't really limit their abilities to any point that would make a difference unless you want to completely neuter them.

Jelaludin

Elanorwen said:

Jelaludin said:

My bad, 6 cities.  It's a lot.  I'm in southeast Asia right now and may be moving to east Asia for work, so in my time zone there's sub-40 people online at a time spread out across 6 cities and who knows how many of those are active.  I'm going to give cross-city interaction a try but in my experience you tend to run into roadblocks and people who want to end you out for fraternizing with the enemy.  Hopefully that won't happen again but I guess we'll see.

It's true that I do love guild wars :P It's a great example of how to integrate standardized PvP into a game that doesn't have it as its main point.

Uh, wha? I thought PvP was the main point of Guild Wars. Why would we go with their model? Never mind that certain guilds can't really limit their abilities to any point that would make a difference unless you want to completely neuter them.

I'd imagine something like attributes to the planar suits that give extra afflictions against other kinds of suits, plus consumable equipment and/or extra abilities.  If people hate the idea then I'm not going to argue it so you guys can relax.

I would add though that I view the buy-in issue as being mostly numeric and so a streamlining overhaul might not do much to level the field, presuming that enough people want it leveled.

Riluna

As far as I understand it, the point isn't to level the playing field at all. It's more just trying to make combat a less overwhelming prospect to learn.

Enyalida

Some things that traditionally add to combat cost overhead are ostensibl going away, though. Stuff like focus mind, for instance.