Shattered Kingdoms

Sure, but why let reason and moderation prevent you from making an [REDACTED] out of yourself with argumentum ad hominem?

I voted for the "glance" adjustment, and kill back. Give adventuring classes and mercenaries "tactical sight" or "advanced glance" or something that would give a readout of the enemy formation, maybe even from a room away, using glance. Maybe let those classes use glance direction.

I think kill front is not so much a bad idea as it is against the general direction of how combat goes. The only thing it reinforces is thoughtless use of opening skills to kill pets/charms. All skills that initiate at a range - dirt kicking, throw, etc - automatically make a player target the person in front of the individual targetted. There should be a tactical advantage to being in the back row beside an extra round or three while your meat shield gets hacked in, especially with the sacrifice of getting your rear shanked by a rogue by being back there. Making the enemy take some time to figure out what is going on is a valid tactical advantage. Does anyone think a formation is a strict 3x3 standing-in-a-square situation and should be automatic to figure out without looking? That's never how I imagined it, especially since we can't just attack anyone on the outside edges on initiation since we 'got the jump'. It's a fluid, human thing.

For example, do you think it should be easy to have 8 wraiths that look exactly the same and you should just automatically, without any idea or observation, begin attacking the right one that, when combat starts, is assigned the detail of protecting the front of the necro? The only way to do that is to attack the necro itself and see what comes to stop you. That requires something that can actually reach said necro. I don't think it's a matter of right/wrong more than a philosophical difference. If formations are 3x3 standing in a square at all times, then yes, kill front should be implemented. I'd also then argue that a scout smaller than the front-line members should have a chance to pelt the front line in the back of the head with a stray arrow. I say that to impart an idea of how formations are fluid, move, and may be relatively spread out that may inhibit this apparent ease everyone thinks any shmo should have in seeing through it.

The only truly functional change this skill has is to be able to use opening attack skills against a front-row NPC combatants quickly in PK - reinforcing hit-and-runs and diminishing the tactics of groups and 'interface management.' Nothing else about the skill is a functional change that is not already in play, and has been used for years. Not in any way that would make anything any easier than it is now.

Deriding "fighting the interface" is deriding some of what tactics are in SK - note 'clever disguises,' having a horde of NPCs as a necromancer, et cetera. A lot more potential advanced tactics aren't built into the game, and I think they should be there before trying to gimp the choices we have to slow combat down and get an advantage.

Kill back, I was on the fence about. Again, this is one of those things that sounds great until you want to play one of the classes victimized by it. But then again, there's only one class that could benefit whatsoever, and I think they could use a buff. There are enough other potential ways to extend avoidance of rogues that this seems only valid for a rogue. It doesn't interfere with the (lack of) use of drive-by starting skills. I don't exactly think it's worth time spent on it, but I don't see any reason to say no to it.

The only problem I have with the enhanced glance is that you still don't know who is guarding whom if they are all the same. I am fine if you try to attack some one and you get the message that something else is guarding them, but the thing is you should know exactly who is guarding them, though. It has nothing to deal with formations being fluid. None of the other ones are guarding that one specific individual, just that one is blocking your path.

Might want to take a minute and read the poll options. The problem I have with the glance modification and skill-specific options are that both can be turned into a client-side front/back command, if you are proficient with triggering (legal triggers, of course). It would be complicated - I am guessing at least four triggers, two conditionals, one variable created by trigger and manipulated via alias, and two additional aliases. Frankly, this is one class of triggers I would not be willing to share either, simply because I am not going to hand it out to people that think using the formation code is some sort of skill-based tactic and voted against the other options in a feeble attempt to maintain some sort of edge in the game - there is no doubt this is a tactic, but there is no skill involved in using it.

Rewarding people that are proficient with their client seems as arbitrary as penalizing certain classes with the tactic of formations that have multiple NPCs of the same name with no way of distinguishing between them. Our characters can clearly see which NPC is standing in front of and behind the target - therefore, we as players should know this information, too. No one disputes this is a long-standing SK tactic, but it doesn't require any skill and it affects classes unequally. If it affected all classes the same or was based on skill, I would be fine with leaving it alone.

What tactic in this game requires skill? There is either proficiency with client scripting, or there is game/mechanics knowledge. Knowledge is tactics in this game, there is no adequate skill other than having the requisite amount of fingers (I'd say a minimum of 7) to type on a keyboard and a WPM rate of over, say, 60 to do anything in a necessary reaction time. If you have the knowledge to do it, and can type, then you have all requisite skill to do it. If you're talking about a character skill being involved - a lot of tactics revolve around facts that have nothing to do with what's in a character's skillset.

If your character knew which one it was, then the output would indicate it. Obviously, that's not exactly the case. There's just as easy an argument to be made about it being valid tactical obfuscation IC as it can be made a problem with the interface. It's more about what it would accomplish in change, and that's absolutely nothing but reinforce certain tactics that may or may not want to be reinforced. If there's no problem with reinforcing said tactics, or wanting to change how it works, then by all means go for it. But there's an equal opposite case to be made, and I felt compelled to make it. It's not exactly precident and we're using code to reach a foregone conclusion as everyone's making it out to be. I don't care either way, because I have no intention of playing anything tactically affected by this.

I just am thinking of ways I would use this to make ganking certain classes severely easier, while leaving many others unaffected. The same reason you seem compelled to be against leaving it alone.

If your character knew whole formations, you would see it in glance. Since they don't, obfuscation is just as logical as the other end of the spectrum. Another explanation is just as easy - it takes an active effort (glance) to see and parse this information. Otherwise you'd see it as soon you walked into the room via an NPC/player's action (X is here, standing in front of Y) Sure, glance is seeing clearly, but that's not knowing instantly without effort. I voted for glance modification with a modified definition of it, because having that 3.NPC or 5.NPC is trash from the start for the reasons you stated and many others.

If it was impossible to initiate the NPC infront of someone, that would be one thing. The problem is - every single class in the game comes with the innate ability to do this, and others get more advanced, easier options (dirt kick). The only adjustment this makes is in the ease of focusing opening skills.

We get it. You are against this change. Our characters can clearly see what is standing in front of and behind the target, so we as players should have access to this information, too. The fact that we don't have access to this information is not proof that we shouldn't as you seem to be arguing, but rather a coding oversight that is about to be fixed.

You're absolutely right. Players should have access to this information, and I never said they shouldn't. Thankfully, that's an irrelevant statement in reflection to what a front.target modifier change would do, streamline, and affect. It's a great argument for clarifying it so players can more easily target based upon glance, though. I explained one way why the current play could be explained, sure - but I also gave a modified glance point, too, to relay this information.

How is that trigger you expounded not possible now, but would somehow become possible with 3.wraith 5.wraith from glance? The same exact class of triggers can be made right now, and used in exact same effect, using all the unique targets everyone else uses. It's not that complicated based off of a TAR-centric alias/trigger system already in place, though it might get tricky finding the right way to exclude non-relevant fluff words from reassigning the target since not everything falls into the adj-gender-race fit - but then again I don't play the scripting game anymore and have forgotten what little I knew. I doubt it'd be as hard as I'm thinking.

Honestly, the only people a client-side front/back command couldn't be used against are 3.wraith 5.wraith necromancers right now. Your argument makes the case for a modified glance by actually including the derided people with similarly-named NPCs as tanks in an arena all other people are already included in.

That the coding oversight is going to be fixed is without question already. If it was automatic, however, the conversation wouldn't exist right now, would it? Remove the "front" idea from the lot of it, make the kill command target the soonest person in reach, exclude starting skills from being able to be re-routed via this soonest person in reach that kill will go under, and then "kill" can be the same thing as dirt and throw for starting a fight. I imagine that's the only real coding oversight going on here.

That's odd because in your previous post you argued exactly the opposite (using circular reasoning, too):



Should we or shouldn't we have access to this information?



It is possible, but it wouldn't serve a useful purpose so there's no reason to spend time creating the class. In fact, I don't recall ever saying it wasn't possible right now. You are conflating being possible with being useful.

Sargas, this is what I meant by a twink. I have always considered a twink is a person that games the system, instead of playing the game.

jerinx, the only way I could see of weeding out the correct wraith would be to glance at every target via a while command structure, then pluck out the info at that time. Since there is lag though, if you are in combat, you are wasting time for that wall of text to be weeded through by the client. I would say at least 2-3 rounds of you doing nothing would happen before the client could weed through it.

Yes, this is possible right now, but also time consuming and generates a lot of spam. The spam could be alleviated by sending the output to a child window, but it still takes time for the MUD to send you the output. You'll lose anywhere from 1 to 3 rounds while the output is sent from the MUD to your client, your client sends it to a child window so as not to spam your screen, and then executes triggers to create and/or delete aliases and variables based on output, and then finally you would be able to execute an alias to send your command back to the MUD.

However, if there was any sort of formation change - a NPC dies, etc. - then your command sent back to the MUD would be meaningless and you would need to glance at every NPC again in order for your client to re-parse the data. It might be somewhat useful, but also dangerous and likely to get you killed, too.