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Combat and Coding Channel

edited July 2015 in New Ideas
Imperian already provides players with amazing access to combat help compared to any other IRE game I've seen - thanks to the way ring works, pretty much.  That is, if you are in the right circle(s).  I am sitting pretty, what do you mean you don't have qualified combatants around most of the time to patiently answer (most of) your stupid questions?

What about something like... when they are actually in the mood to answer questions, combatants "blessed" by admin as such "log on" to the combat channel as "guides".  That way, we know they are ready and willing to answer questions for the time being, and it opens those people up to cross-circle questions (you know, if you don't have your own combatants around who know almost everything about every profession).  And, so long as people aren't overly considerate and "take it to tells", a lot of the discussions would honestly be a great thing for everyone to listen to.  I think there should definitely be a reward, too.  Like, at least a cool satchel :D  (and also probably credits).  Don't kill me if you hate it :/  

As things are now, you can of course always ask people, say, in tells, but you never really know if they're busy or not, especially if they're not in your own ring, or in a clan with you, and of course there are forums, but ring has been VERY kind to me in trying to get things accomplished, and if that could somehow be extended game-wide, it seems like that would be great.  It could be a bit unmanageable if the game was a LOT bigger, but for now, it seems like it could be pretty good.  If it got to be too much, you could probably split the channels, with one or two leads on each.  And, for players who are tuned into the channel, when a combatant was taking questions, you would see something like the occasional admin announcement "so and so is accepting questions right now" (except it would hopefully be a LOT more frequent than that).  There wouldn't always be a "qualified" combatant taking questions, much like newbie doesn't always have a guide, and in that case, any kind person who might try to answer your question... well, take it with a grain of salt.  They might be right, they might not.  "Guides'" names would also be a special color in the channel who, and they would only be in the channel when accepting questions.  They would of course be able to leave the channel at any time, say to respond to any sort of in-game conflict that might arise.  

Comments

  • I started a mudlet coding clan quite a long time ago, and I still have it, and it's *somewhat* active. Combat talk is always welcome there as well, and anyone is welcome, as I have said before. As far as this clan goes, I don't care about circle alliances and all that. Of course, just like everything else though, the people who know most, and are better at this sort of stuff than myself or some people there aren't willing to join and help unless it's to help only their best of friends.
  • I hope/think that is the mudlet clan I am in.  
  • Sure is. I like to help when I'm around, and with things that I can help with. But, as I said, most better PvPers and coders aren't willing to help anyone outside of their cliques.
  • We probably have SOME of that?  It seems to be a gamer thing.  But, the very top tier seems to have an opposite tendency, for the most part, and I've noticed that's consistent.  I think they are quite frankly just not threatened at all that someone will outdo them, so why not (mostly) share?
  • If we do not help people learn to fight, who will be around for us to fight?

    "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."

  • Khizan said:
    If we do not help people learn to fight, who will be around for us to fight?
    The other people in your clique?

    Also, not aiming my things at any one specific person, and not only top-tier. Just seems to be the trending thing.
  • There is a difference between 'I want to learn how to fight better' and 'someone code me a (bashing) system'. We are generally very helpful with the former. We are not so sympathetic, however, to the latter. Really, it is all about how you ask for help and the manner in which you do it that seems to dictate whether people want to help you or not.
  • The other thing is that when a lot of people say "Help me learn how to fight better" they really mean "give me a set of moves that I can repeat for a certain kill". They don't want to learn how to piece together their offense for themselves, they want you to tell them that they can do a 360 Ollie Heelflip out of a nickel defense into Boar Rushes Down the Mountain and cancel into a Tatsumaki Senpukyaku to win the fight 100% of the time, and they get upset when there's not a Guaranteed Death Combo.

    "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."

  • I feel like I've seen all of the above.  From the people Yurii probably has in mind (and they do exist), who seem to want to guard ALL combat information as jealously as they would their best tricks - "by golly, if you want to use wheels, son, you are going to have to figure out how to make rubber from sap like I did when I was 15 and started playing 14 hours a day in my spare time while I was building my first computer", to the "make me a thingy" or "how can I WIN against <insert top level combat person here> (not survive a bit longer, not do better in groups, not just do this one thing marginally better)" attitude Ultrix and Khizan are talking about.  

    I feel like the information hoarding side has gotten better over the years within IRE in general, and my impression of Imperian is that it's just flat out way better than everyone else in the information sharing department.  Anyway, the people who know stuff are definitely not evenly sprinkled, and probably never will be.  And, especially as Imperian is so combat focused, it would be neat to see it have a recognized, dedicated channel where people are allowed to ask mechanics questions that aren't "newbie" questions.  It's exactly the sort of thing that a lot of MUDs would scream bloody murder about, just like they'd hate our rings, but which I think fits Imperian incredibly well.  Although, I will be honest, I don't really want to share our Q & A team >_>
  • This is based on my experience:

    If I have lost against certain person(s), and asked what I could do better, I've always got a helpful answer. Also, if someone asks how they could perform better against me or someone I know, I tend to help and give tips.

    Identifying the problem and thinking of solution is the first step. If you don't know how to put the solution in practice, then ask for help.

    Starting from the very basic can be helpful. IF this happens, THEN this should happen afterwards.
  • IniarIniar Australia
    There are not enough credits in this galaxy or the next to spur me to be a 'coding/combat' guide.
    wit beyond measure is a Sidhe's greatest treasure
  • Iniar said:
    There are not enough credits in this galaxy or the next to spur me to be a 'coding/combat' guide.
    You'd do it for me, right? <3

  • edited July 2015
    Iniar said:
    There are not enough credits in this galaxy or the next to spur me to be a 'coding/combat' guide.
    Heh, I forgot about this side of it.  It is so true.  Yes, combatants who will suffer through teaching the "slow" kids at all are definitely the exception ("gah, how you can you not understand this?").  There might or might not even be enough of them for something like this to work - even with them having the option to "sign in" and "sign out" as they like, and even with a reward system in place.  That said, we do have people already doing this on ring.  A lot - and usually without a tangible reward other than "YES!  My nooblet finally learned their times tables".   
  • For me, Dreacor showed me how to put together one attack(basically check for rebounding/shield and then smite) and I just took it from there with what he showed me. Issues I tend to have now are all priority healing based and from my experiences that is mostly learned through fighting. Don't get me wrong I still ask questions, but less and less are about combat.

    Generally, when someone is having a rough time with me in the sap train I help them regardless of circle(Kaywinett for example) which kind of sucks because now she has learned how to not die in 20 seconds against me, but I would rather her be more confident against me then just leave the second I walk into a room, because that is not fun for anyone.


  • If you can learn variables and if/then/else you can figure out how to code absolutely anything you need for this game.

    Granted, it might take you 200 lines of spaghetti code with 30 different variables and two dozen nested if statements to match what Ultrix does with 10 lines of code, two paperclips, and a bottle of superglue... but you can do it. 

    "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."

  • Noone who is actually "top tier" in this game is an information hoarder. Sorry, just isn't true. If they are actually good, they don't rely on a gimick that only works as long as someone doesn't know how it works, because everyone else in that skill group will stomp the hell out of them, because they'll pretty much know all the lame/gimicky things already and have abused them ruthlessly in the past/present.

    Personally, I'll answer just about any combat question if you catch me when I'm not busy. I'll tell you how to code something, but unless I put you at a 7 or above on the I like you scale I probably won't code it for you. I'm pretty sure that is about the stance of most people.

  • These things are all true.  The thing is, I get to ask the Ultrix questions.  And the Khizan.  And the Septus.  Like, almost whenever I don't see Kryss health spam on ring :D  And that is how I finally learned how to make amazing sphaghetti code.  But what about the people in the Magick Pinterest ring OKAY?  They have a couple of guys sometimes, but I get the impression they don't get nearly the chance to ask questions someone in AM, and probably Demonic, does.  And long term, that can of course always shuffle drastically.  
  • Right now, it's mostly not worth asking the people in Magick. So the people that are there that want to learn should be asking people from other circles if they want help with this stuff.

  • IniarIniar Australia
    edited July 2015
    The biggest turn off for me is that people expect to get it -right- the first time round without needing to -learn- anything. 

    "It's so simple, it should just work." <-- doesn't want to learn how to concatenate a string

    "You are so good at coding, I just can't get it to work" <-- doesn't know how much frustration I dealt with learning about the syntaxes of Mudlet's matches and code assertation.

    "This isn't working, I'm going back to baking cookies." <-- cookies are good and important

    "They are a lot better than me, I just can't beat them" <-- has 20k credits worth of artifacts but doesn't realise that the other party has put in > 10 hours of coding, and > 30 hours of play testing.

    At the end of the day, it is a lot easier to blame the other team for 'cheating' than it is to admit that you're either too lazy or too incompetent to check what you're writing; either way, you get back to the game of drinking tea a lot sooner.

    Edit:

    This is my favourite one.

    "I want to get better at PK." <-- wants me to drop rebounding (and no other testing with rebounding up)

    CMON.
    wit beyond measure is a Sidhe's greatest treasure
  • Iniar said:
    The biggest turn off for me is that people expect to get it -right- the first time round without needing to -learn- anything. 

    "It's so simple, it should just work." <-- doesn't want to learn how to concatenate a string

    "You are so good at coding, I just can't get it to work" <-- doesn't know how much frustration I dealt with learning about the syntaxes of Mudlet's matches and code assertation.

    "This isn't working, I'm going back to baking cookies." <-- cookies are good and important

    "They are a lot better than me, I just can't beat them" <-- has 20k credits worth of artifacts but doesn't realise that the other party has put in > 10 hours of coding, and > 30 hours of play testing.

    At the end of the day, it is a lot easier to blame the other team for 'cheating' than it is to admit that you're either too lazy or too incompetent to check what you're writing; either way, you get back to the game of drinking tea a lot sooner.

    Edit:

    This is my favourite one.

    "I want to get better at PK." <-- wants me to drop rebounding (and no other testing with rebounding up)

    CMON.
    Well... I will say that my favorite part of this post is the part where you don't say "coding is so super easy, god"  :P  
  • Kryss said:
    Right now, it's mostly not worth asking the people in Magick. So the people that are there that want to learn should be asking people from other circles if they want help with this stuff.
    @Kryss Please don't talk about things you don't actually know about. There are usually 1-5 decent coders around in Magick during the majority of the day, all of which are willing to help with just about any coding issue. There are also generally 1-5 of us around at any point in time that are familiar with the vast majority of the classes in Imperian and can answer most(if not all) questions that someone has about their or someone else's class(which IMO is the most common type of combat question coming from newer players).
    image
  • IniarIniar Australia
    edited July 2015
    Jules said:
    Well... I will say that my favorite part of this post is the part where you don't say "coding is so super easy, god"  :P  
    The truth is, it isn't. Nothing done well is easily done. And that's the thing a lot of the 'requesters' don't get... that unless you code for a living, most of it takes a good time to get down pat; I've spent a lot of time learning this stuff and people don't get that.
    wit beyond measure is a Sidhe's greatest treasure
  • I differ in opinion. Coding is easy, at the level required for Imperian. You can handle everything you need in this game with nothing but if/then/else and variables, and I am convinced that anybody can learn that in maybe an hour tops, if they're willing to stop crying about how they can't code and just sit down and go over it.

    The hard part is learning to think programatically, learning how to approach a problem in a manner that can be solved with code. And, really, that's not a coding problem. That's just learning how to break a complicated problem down into smaller problems that you can solve. As an example, rebounding:

    Problem: I want my attack button to raze automatically.
       Subproblem: I need to track rebounding status
          Solution:
    Make triggers for rebounding status change messages that set a rebounding variable
             Problem: Triggers fire on all status changes
                Solution: Make triggers change the variable only if the message applies to the current target
       Subproblem:
    My attack button needs two modes.
          Solution: 
    Use if/then/else based off of rebounding variable.
             Subproblem: 
    Status does not update with new target
                Solution: Make target alias set rebounding status to show rebounding is up

    Once you break something as seemingly complicated as a 'smart' offensive alias down it becomes a simple matter of "trigger checks for target's name(this uses if/then) and sets a variable" and "alias checks state of variable and chooses an attack based off of it(this uses if/then/else)".

    People get intimidated by the idea of combat because they think that you need Septus-tier skills and a Septus-tier system to fight decently, when the truth is that the basic fundamentals of "varname = 1" and "if thing then this else that" will cover a solid 90% of everything you'll ever want to do.

    "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."

  • IniarIniar Australia
    Yeah, you're right, I don't disagree with you - I probably misphrased what I was trying to say... Learning how to devise your solution in the syntax that you've learnt is probably the biggest curve, and doing it with ease takes practice (which 95% of people don't want to seem to do). Like you said, if they're willing to stop crying about how they can't code and just sit down and go over it. 
    wit beyond measure is a Sidhe's greatest treasure
  • What if you cry while you code?  
  • IniarIniar Australia
    Eventually you just run out of tears (speaking from experience).
    wit beyond measure is a Sidhe's greatest treasure
  • For me, learning to code is a very quick ordeal. It's not so much learning how to do basic things like conditionals in my mind, @Khizan, as it is A) Learning the fundamental logic behind things like affliction curing (how best to predict what's cured based on symptom messages, subsequent actions after the cure (smoking pipe, etc.) and what you /know/ they have, given what you've afflicted them with. And B) Taking what you understand from that, and breaking it down into solvable problems using the syntax and code you know, whatever system you're in.

    Having in the past been principally a deathknight limb combatant, at a time when my 'afflicting' consisted of spamming metrazol/ciguatoxin with the rare aconite or what have you before benzene/benzene etc., I am still wrapping my head around this, which is partly my own fault, and it is largely the thing I spend the most time frustrated over. That is, converting real logic into interpreted scripts.
  • Ihsan said:
    For me, learning to code is a very quick ordeal.
    Psh.

    You're welcome for the help :P
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