Some 1v1 Combat Ideas

Iriaen

Here's some 1v1 combat ideas I just came up with:

Diabolist

Warpeye - creates a retardation effect in the room.  Since one eye is occupied, the Diabolist can only use single stare effects while the ability is active.  If there is too much activity in the room, the eye cannot maintain or start the warp effect.

Summoner

Aeon - back to how it used to be, but same as the above, if there is more than one person fighting in the room, the aeon wears off or can't be started.

Limb Classes

Riposte - parrying a limb targetted attack now causes the attack to rebound upon the attacker.  If there is too much activity in the room, there is not enough room to make the maneuver against your opponent.

Affliction Classes

Cure roulette (sic) - One cure (not counting attack-preventing affliction cures) can't be used for a few seconds, and the roulette wheel changes the applicable cure every several seconds, so that you have to accept fighting with certain afflictions temporarily and change your strategy accordingly.  To prevent stacking, you can eat a less used herb (perhaps even a wort) to cure yourself down to 1 affliction of the blocked type, but your opponent can force you to hold onto at least 1 blocked affliction for the duration of the roulette, unless you got rid of it with a general affliction healing skill.

Probably these will all be shot down because they are like what we used to have, but I hope that some people will consider them because I think they would bring back the killing methods that made 1v1 appealing to a minority of us back in the day and there haven't been any popular suggestions yet on how to make 1v1 popular within the current system.

Sarrius

Iriaen said:

Here's some 1v1 combat ideas I just came up with:

Diabolist

Warpeye - creates a retardation effect in the room.  Since one eye is occupied, the Diabolist can only use single stare effects while the ability is active.  If there is too much activity in the room, the eye cannot maintain or start the warp effect.

Summoner

Aeon - back to how it used to be, but same as the above, if there is more than one person fighting in the room, the aeon wears off or can't be started.

Limb Classes

Riposte - parrying a limb targetted attack now causes the attack to rebound upon the attacker.  If there is too much activity in the room, there is not enough room to make the maneuver against your opponent.

Affliction Classes

Cure roulette (sic) - One cure (not counting attack-preventing affliction cures) can't be used for a few seconds, and the roulette wheel changes the applicable cure every several seconds, so that you have to accept fighting with certain afflictions temporarily and change your strategy accordingly.  To prevent stacking, you can eat a less used herb (perhaps even a wort) to cure yourself down to 1 affliction of the blocked type, but your opponent can force you to hold onto at least 1 blocked affliction for the duration of the roulette, unless you got rid of it with a general affliction healing skill.

Probably these will all be shot down because they are like what we used to have, but I hope that some people will consider them because I think they would bring back the killing methods that made 1v1 appealing to a minority of us back in the day and there haven't been any popular suggestions yet on how to make 1v1 work within the current system.

Diabolist: Because what the focused affliction class with room-bound hellsight needs is retardation, right? Yeah, I didn't think so. A bottleneck of commands like retardation and aeon means that your choices are:

CURE AFFLICTIONS

or

ATTACK

Not both. That was the problem with aeon. Coding for it was frustrating, working inside of it was frustrating, and it basically reduced combat to a slow crawl where you had a lot less control over your own gameplay. If you choose to attack, your command delay might mean you have been peaced or paralyzed, which means you can't attack when your command goes through. This idea gets a thumbs down.

Summoner: Thumbs. Down. Why? I have to choose between

CURE HEALTH

or

CURE AFFLICTIONS

or

ATTACK

See above. Aeon was changed for a very good reason, and that reason is no less true now. Giving it back to the class that had it, with all of the tools they now have now that the burden of aeon isn't tying down their combat mechanics, is not a good idea.

Limb Damage: This doesn't solve any issues. What does it really do? You have one parry. You have six limbs. You will get hit somewhere else and have to shift that parry eventually.

Affliction Classes: No, no, no. We already have problems with skills like Shadowplant as it is. Randomly changing what you can and cannot use is a great way to place a tremendous burden of knowledge, unnecessary coding, et cetera on combatants. It serves to shut new players out who find the process daunting. Thumbs. Down.

None of this is like what we used to have, besides the 'lol retardation' and 'lol aeon' suggestions. We removed both of those for good reason. Why give them back, especially to a circle that does not need them?

Ashel

Giving retardation to malignists would be like giving retardation back to mages, except worse, because hellsight is the single most dangerous affliction that you can be tagged with in retardation. As a Mage I once bound the entire numpad to smoke laurel so that when Draven tagged me with it I could smash it with my fist until it stopped.

Iluv

Those things, which appealed like you said to a small minority of the game, were detrimental to the game as a whole and were removed rightfully.

Juran

Retardation, nightmare, gravehands traps sound fantastic. This should be added immediately.

Iriaen

Having to choose between curing and attacking within a 2-second window is why those things would get people killed...

Well OK guys, I trust that you are on top of this and that Imperian will have a 1v1 game again some time within the next several years.

Iluv

Imperian has a 1v1 game. Learn it and play with us.

Iriaen

That's weird cause in the weeks I've been back, I've only seen an arena spar once every couple days and the only duels I even know of were the ones with me in them.  The 1v1 game may not be very appealing.

Sarrius

The 1v1 game exists, but it just doesn't have an outlet. That's the problem. Not combat balance. It needs a stage.

Mathiaus

We are just a handful, but 1v1 still exists, I promise.

Iriaen

Really, no one uses nightmare so it could be taken out, and maybe stupidity could be disabled in retardation.  This game could still benefit from things that a player can lose control over but I guess it's not going to happen.

Iluv

I will give you an endless amount of 1v1 fights. Just ask.

Juran

Iriaen said:

Really, no one uses nightmare so it could be taken out, and maybe stupidity could be disabled in retardation.  This game could still benefit from things that a player can lose control over but I guess it's not going to happen.

What's interesting about these ideas to me is  that they really just complicate combat, add more wildcards to the equation. If you randomly make someone unable to use a particular cure, you will cause a lot of people to die in PvP - but you know the sort of people that will survive? The people like me that work out how to properly adjust and model curing with these scenarios in mind.

Sarrius

Iriaen said:

Really, no one uses nightmare so it could be taken out, and maybe stupidity could be disabled in retardation.  This game could still benefit from things that a player can lose control over but I guess it's not going to happen.

There is no reason, whatsoever, why losing control of a character is an acceptable game mechanism.

The reason League of Legends is so popular in the MOBA genre is because of the accessibility of the game play. It removes all the pointless, needless bullshit and focuses on making itself accessible to any player. They do not rely on arcane concepts that are largely outside of the control of the player. Everything there is based on making plays. The lack of prevalence of long stuns, for instance, is because of their core philosophy: losing control of your character is not fun and it is not healthy for game balance. It is also stupidly overpowered. 

A lot of things you seem to want or miss are things that cannot come back because they run up against this wall of accessibility. The best way to make sure people keep playing after trying it once is to avoid frustrating game elements.

Khizan

Juran said:

Iriaen said:

Really, no one uses nightmare so it could be taken out, and maybe stupidity could be disabled in retardation.  This game could still benefit from things that a player can lose control over but I guess it's not going to happen.

What's interesting about these ideas to me is  that they really just complicate combat, add more wildcards to the equation. If you randomly make someone unable to use a particular cure, you will cause a lot of people to die in PvP - but you know the sort of people that will survive? The people like me that work out how to properly adjust and model curing with these scenarios in mind.

So you mean... these awesome random ideas to bring the game away from the control the spreadsheet mafia... would benefit the people who go into excessive detail and calculate out all the possible answers and situations?

Hrm...

Juran

Khizan said:

So you mean... these awesome random ideas to bring the game away from the control the spreadsheet mafia... would benefit the people who go into excessive detail and calculate out all the possible answers and situations?

Hrm...

I have a really good recursive healing function called UNRAVEL for just such a situation. It takes my highest priority affliction and steps backwards by cure type until it finds something preventing me from healing it that it can actually cure - for example if I have paralysis and anorexia, it will check for slickness/impatience and send whichever has the highest probability of curing the thing that prevents me from curing paralysis. If I also had slickness or if focusing wasn't a guaranteed cure, it would step further and check for asthma, etc until it settled on what it should send. The idea being that it will cure your highest priority affliction in the least number of steps and let you get back to fighting.

So if you want to reintroduce aeon as a game mechanic, I'm ready.

Risca

Iriaen said:

That's weird cause in the weeks I've been back, I've only seen an arena spar once every couple days and the only duels I even know of were the ones with me in them.  The 1v1 game may not be very appealing.

I consider myself part of the crowd who enjoys 1v1. I think most of the older crowd will know that I rarely participated in team combat unless it was for raid defense back in the day. I used to only play in arena events to test my strategies or to satisfy my need to pvp. Why have I stopped going to the arena or look for 1v1?

Why I stopped playing in the arena?

1. I feel I have nothing left to show or prove in the arena. I have every magick profession in the game and have created a functional combat strategy for each profession. Any professions in demonic or AM that were similar (ie knights, malignists, predator) were adapted from my magick professions on my alts. 

2. Artifacts - People nowadays see me as the super artifacted character that has almost every artifact in the game. This was not the case for probably half my Imperian experience. Now that I have these artifacts, it CAN be fun for me to go 1v1 against people and I snicker when I 2 shot people with whatever flavor of the month skill at the time (see warden dshot, mage staffcast/holos, druid stab/choke, maul/pound, grove maelstrom/lightning, hunter axe stun, sabre <2.0). However, this probably isn't fun to be on at the receiving end all the time. Sometimes I "choose" not to participate because going in just wouldn't be fair and I like to see an even battle unfold sometimes, sometimes not. 

3. Raksha - The point here is that I don't play in the arena because I can "test combat" or "pvp safely" out in the real world with one.  

4. Ability to attack yourself - People went to the arena to test damage or test abilities. Now that we can target ourselves, there's no need for me to do that. The only thing missing right now is a target dummy so I can see third party messages instead of the message I see when I attack myself.

Why 1v1 is rare?

1. Ability to escape - If my target doesn't want to fight, they have a high probability of escaping with any number of skills at their disposal (gaze, leap, twist, etc.). I'm certainly aware that there are abilities to counteract these, but if a person is constantly spamming escapes, "depending on my profession," I might not be advancing my offense and it becomes a stalemate. At this point I can keep trying for the kill or just let them go. More often than not, I will let them go. #aintnobodygottimeforthat

2. Quick travel abilities - With Whyte's mapper, path find, atlas pages, track pets, stating your room num, etc. it's so easy to call in reinforcements. If my target doesn't want to 1v1 which is more often than not since these people ARE the minority, then I have to be a profession that can either burst them down quickly or just have to flee before I get teamed, or I call my own reinforcements and now we enter team combat.

3. Artifacts - Broad statement here, but there's some merit to it. "The more artifacts you get, the fewer people willing to fight you 1v1." As such, see point #2. I get it, and I'm not complaining here. It makes sense and is practical.

Iniar

For a low price of 1 gold sovereign, Iniar is available for third party testing. Accidentally killing Iniar is ok.

Khizan

Risca said:

2. Quick travel abilities - With Whyte's mapper, path find, atlas pages, track pets, stating your room num, etc. it's so easy to call in reinforcements. If my target doesn't want to 1v1 which is more often than not since these people ARE the minority, then I have to be a profession that can either burst them down quickly or just have to flee before I get teamed, or I call my own reinforcements and now we enter team combat.

  I don't think it's the minority so much as that people just don't like getting into fights they know they cannot win. This was as true back in the old days as it is now, it's just that in the old days they healed so badly they never had a chance to escape. 

Most of the people who actually have a chance of winning if they choose to fight back will fight back without bringing in a full team, in my experience

Kryss

1v1 is more balanced now then ever before. If you want to take part in it/improve at it/whatever then I say go for it and ignore most of the posts on these forums that for the most part, serve only negative purposes. There -are- still people who enjoy single combat primarily.

Iriaen

I'm just being a sourpuss because Imperian is the kind of game I can play (in a fashion) while working, that's something that interests me, but team combat in a MUD makes me want to slam my head on the wall.  So much spam.  Maybe I should go back to Eve.  The combat isn't any better, it probably manages to be even worse, but at least with graphics it can do team combat well.

Iniar

Subs. Works for me. Otherwise I'd give up playing. (Thanks @Azefel)

Sarrius

Iriaen said:

I'm just being a sourpuss because Imperian is the kind of game I can play (in a fashion) while working, that's something that interests me, but team combat in a MUD makes me want to slam my head on the wall.  So much spam.  Maybe I should go back to Eve.  The combat isn't any better, it probably manages to be even worse, but at least with graphics it can do team combat well.

Team combat can be fun at the very very low scale - 3v3 or so. 5v5 is where I draw the line.

Gurn

Iriaen said:

Maybe I should go back to Eve.

Wait. You complain about us being spreadsheet warriors, and you play EVE, otherwise known as: Spreadsheets, The Game?

Also, the last thing the game needs is more random confusing things to alienate new players. More complicated is not the way to go-- Neither is simpler, obviously, but there very much needs to be a constant "easy to learn hard to master" thing going on.

Azefel

This has probably been stated somewhere before (maybe even more than once) but I find it really telling when I start agreeing with Gurn's forum posts

Iriaen

Et tu, Azefel?

Sarrius

Sarrius said:

The 1v1 game exists, but it just doesn't have an outlet. That's the problem. Not combat balance. It needs a stage.

Cadeyrn

Iriaen said:

Et tu, Azefel?

Are you sure this isn't an elaborate troll?

Ahkan

Haha, the game is balance for 1v1.

1v1 is and always will be open for people who want to find it. It's not that hard. Boring sure, but easy to find.

Azefel

Kryss