Shattered Kingdoms

As a barb, I spam bash and hope for the best. As a healer, I heal one person and hope I live. Too much spam too fast for me to make heads or tails of what's going on. But that's just me. The rapidly scrolling screen doesn't help my occasional mild vertigo any.

An interesting point. I'd love to see PK battles last longer. I can see any changes needing a lot of balancing and thought put in, such as the adjustments to NPC hit points and skills being skill based rather than level based (much as I liked not being bashed by lower level peeps)

We love to put Big D through the coding mill don't we?

Gets my vote as far as lengthening battles, not sure I want more lag added to things.

There is the arguement that the elite (myself certainly not included) will feel a bit aggrieved that their advantage in quick thinking/typing/cheater scripts has been nerfed (though I'm happy to upset them *egrin*)

And I really need to play with this new anti spam doofer.

I am a pretty good typer, but my speed isn't lightning. In too many large pk battles it comes down to whom has the best set of triggers or the fastest typer/reader. Slowing it down would allow those who don't have the gift of lightning fingers and massive amounts of triggers have a chance in hell to deal with the situation. Right now, for me at least, a round goes by before I can type out too many of the commands I think needs to be done. I have been using more and more aliases and triggers but I know that some others have triggers and aliases that just own me. This would take away the advantage of those with lightning fingers and those who took massive amounts of time to make a million triggers/aliases.

This post goes against the spirit of SK--skill. If you don't have it then you shouldn't be handed it on a silver platter.

I haven't taken a side on this issue yet but I will take issue with the above statement. There is a difference between having in-game skill and having scripting skill. Knowing how best to use racial weakness, how to track or trap someone, when to uses what weapon subtype, or even just knowing how to get the right gear could be called in-game skill. But to have access to the best mud client and knowing how to script the proper triggers and such is not in-game skill. This is a very important difference and is the heart of the issue.

I love seeing more tactical aspects added to the game such as weapon sub-types, the new weapon material types, etc because the use of tactics in-game is a measure of skill. But just because someone can script their mud client shouldn't be considered skill in terms of SK.

On another note, there is something to be said for the "rush" of battle. I don't know if slowing combat down would hurt it or not, but it is a thrill and something to be considered.


Lei Kung

You don't have to have an issue with me, Lei Kung. I don't script myself to gain an advantage and everything I do is by typing it out.

I'm also opposed to those that use scripts to gain an advantage.

I never said nor do I have an issue with you....at least not that I know of. And I wasn't accusing you of using scripts or triggers or what have you. I was just taking "issue" with your statement. Note, I don't disagree with the basic idea of skill being a part of SK, just that benefits rendered from outside influences shouldn't be part of the SK skill equation.

Lei Kung

I would like to see it slowed, every mud client I have tried so far lags the hell out of me in the first round of combat, I miss five rounds of combat before I see anything. Some of us just have flighty conections. ZMUD and SIMPLEMU for me both lag like hell on a tick and lag like hell in larger PKs I would like to acctually get some time to react like I do with NPCs.

I agree. The mass spam actually makes me feel more like something big, dangerous, and chaotic is about to happen.

I also love looking back at the logs and going "Holy crap! look at what I did! I did not know I landed that petrify!"

It is true though, that spell casting classes have an OOC weekness, i.e. visual disadvantage and needing to type more specific stuff. So I see the logic of the first post. I type pretty fast myself, so maybe I am shooting myself in the foot...but fast typers and fighter classes (auto pilot) have the advantage in large combat currently.

So, I don't know about you guys - but I am completely dumbfounded at the concept of using scripts or triggers to ones advantage. I have never, ever found an opportunity to use a trigger to give me an advantage in SK - and I have actively looked for an opportunity to 'abuse' a script or trigger in this manner.

Not a single scenario exists where a script or trigger would be beneficial to a character in any way other than scripting spell improves or scripting xp, both of which become moot after one hits GM.

Anyways - when I first started pking here I would have supported this idea. The screen scrolled by so fast, I didn't know what to look for. Now that I know what to look for, it wouldn't be hard to handle pk scroll then went by twice as fast. I remember getting 'visibly' nervous IRL before a pk about five years ago, and I wouldn't know what to do when a fight came around. PK scroll really is not that quick, and 'speed of typing' really does not come into play. The most you are typing is about 6 letters in the middle of a fight, and that probably won't even affect the outcome of the battle.