Gbot and the State of Afflictions

Delrayne

I'm sure I'll probably get shot down by many of you for this, and probably for good reasons that I'd like to see just to ease my mind a bit. Now, with that said, on to the topic. With Gbot rocking out like boss 99% of the time, what is the downside of giving every aff giving a third party give/cure message? Is it really that strong a factor with Gbot in it's current state?

Anyone who plays an affliction class does their best to discern what afflictions the target has and just cured. We've taken the guess work out of so much already, why not take this leap as well. I'm honestly asking here, do you think this would be to much? If so then why? Do you think this wouldn't affect things very much at all and think this should happen? If so then why? I look forward to the comments headed this way whether they be negative or positive, just so long as they justify it one way or another.

Khizan

Delrayne said:

Is it really that strong a factor with Gbot in it's current state? 

Yes.

Delrayne

@Khizan Noted, but could you elaborate a bit more? Or perhaps @Juran or @Velion who also agreed with you could.

Ahkan

I used to think there should be some sort of improved affliction tracking until I really thought about it. Here's why. There's actually a lot of guess work that you code into your system, making affliction assumptions based off of target behavior.  Perfect tracking would remove this 'skill' requirement that separates the 'good' from the cookie cutter*.  Like, why do good afflicters still use oxalis? (Not because of blade dance). Past that, any sort of 100% tracking would actually be a step back at this point, defeating the purpose of super healing for the masses. All of your affliction classes would just become linear bum rushes that is two modes 0% success and 100% success, which is killing the entire point of why affliction classes are fun. 

Good: Antrax, Faz
Cookie cutter: Sadie, Virtus, Dias, every malignist pre-2011.

Velion

Ahkan said:

I used to think there should be some sort of improved affliction tracking until I really thought about it. Here's why. There's actually a lot of guess work that you code into your system, making affliction assumptions based off of target behavior.  Perfect tracking would remove this 'skill' requirement that separates the 'good' from the cookie cutter*.  Like, why do good afflicters still use oxalis? (Not because of blade dance). Past that, any sort of 100% tracking would actually be a step back at this point, defeating the purpose of super healing for the masses. All of your affliction classes would just become linear bum rushes that is two modes 0% success and 100% success, which is killing the entire point of why affliction classes are fun. 

Good: Antrax, Faz
Cookie cutter: Sadie, Virtus, Dias, every malignist pre-2011.

I resent that. Cookie cutter implies you don't write anything yourself. I write everything myself . Apart from that, this is all right.

Juran

Attack speed is significantly faster than heal speed in a large number of cases, the 'guesswork' that comes from predictive afflicting is what makes that whole house of cards work.

You could make afflicting 100% transparent and slow everything down, but that's basically impossible to balance well. The class would either be effective and always win, or ineffective and never win.

Khizan

You're taking gbot too seriously here. Gbot's not magical. It's just a decent system that's available to everybody, and it's also a healing baseline that ensures that everybody has a minimum healing level of n. That's all.

You might as well have said "Since everybody can use Whytebot, why not make all afflictions have third party cure messages?" It's the same principle. 

It wouldn't work, for all the reasons already mentioned.

Hanzou

I'd love getting more thirdpart messages from cures, like showing what tree, focus and purge cured. BUT that would mean it'd be way too easy to track things for me and I'd lock you up quite fast or at least get infirmities at a much higher speed.

It's easy to do qualified guesswork with what's presented today really, there's even a few toxins/afflictions that give thirdpart messages already. So as others have already said, it'd be way too powerful if we got a message for each affliction cured simply because attacks outpace healing. We always need a little RNG to balance things out and not make it too predictable.

Azefel

Don't put me out of business, dick.

Mathiaus

Gbot still doesn't cure crippled limbs with tree; instead it simply waits for salve balance to come back.

Same with certain afflictions for focus, purge, among other instances that I can't recall off the top of my head.

Like Khizan said, it's not magickal, but it gets the job done. It's up to the player to discern what it isn't doing and fill in the gaps.

Delrayne

Good to know. Like said, I'd probably get shot down and for good reasons and now mind is at ease.

Dicene

Your basilisk notifies you that Juran has cured the effects of amnesia. *cough cough*

Aulani

I'm not sure what you're trying to imply Dicene, but discern only works sometimes. 1/3 or less, if I remember correctly.

Dicene

AB file says "This does not work consistently - the basilisk has a 10% chance to identify the affliction successfully." Not implying anything, other than that basilisks like to discern things that don't matter. Oh, someone died and prone was cured on death, thank you basilisk, for the ever-useful information. 10% seems like a pretty appropriate success rate for the skill. And with triggers and the like, we've got some help in tracking afflictions, for sure. I like leaving a lot of things up to coding skill. More places where advanced coding can give you an advantage, more places where a player without artis can make up the difference. I'd say affliction heavy classes like Saboteurs and Malignists would do well to have a very low chance Discernment like that, but I think most classes should do without. I'm curious if AB VISION DISCERNMENT in Aetolia is 100%, or just RNG like ours.

Edit: If it's not clear from the paragraph above, I think Supremacy Discernment is balanced well. I'm just saying that in between it discerning useful things, it likes to show random things that don't really mean anything to me that I wasn't expecting to see.

Septus

Unless somethings changed in the last 2 years or so (I think that was the last time I played Aetolia), curing order is set there. Its not really a big deal for something like discern to be 100%, because you should always know 100% of the time what someone has cured.

(Disclaimer: it is highly possible I am completely misremembering, in which case disregard.)

Jimery

yeah Aetolia has a set curing order so  like kelp will cure in a certain order from top to bottom, but then Aetolia have a discernment skill in vision so things like tree / end game ability or hidden healing like seraph etc will also show up like .. You discern that Jimery has cured X.  so basically what the Basilisk does but for a general skill...

wait.. So Imperian doesn't have a set order of the way it cures? and is completely random... ? like if I eat a kelp and have 3 kelp afflictions it'll cure any of them?

Azefel

thankfully yes

Juran

One of the best early decisions that they ever made.