So you modify your strategy. Instead of hitting head twice and arms twice, you alternate one head and one arm attack. You modified your offence on the fly in response to the defensive trend you saw. I think that's a very basic, simple example of skill?
With the massive scroll involved in IRE combat, picking out and adapting to that sort of thing on the fly would be very difficult. If you've automated things a great deal and have a way to quickly swap strategies in an instant and are paying attention to this specific detail then, maybe.
Realistically, I think you notice this sort of thing maybe during the fight but probably later reading logs and adapt your strategy for next time.
Word is, Starmourn is trying to build a combat system that isn't as reliant on triggers as other IRE games. I definitely hope they succeed. I'd much rather combat be based around strategic, in the moment choices rather than who has scripted the best combat bot.
Ultimately, it's not possible to build a text MUD combat system that can't be automated. I mean, computers are kicking our butts at chess and Go, and some great AI researchers are now working on cracking Starcraft II.
That said, nobody has ever fully automated Achaea's combat. They've automated parts of it, but offense is very hard to automate well, particularly when you include movement into there. Were people to put even close to the kind of expertise and resources into automating Achaea's combat as they have with chess or go though, I'm positive they'd succeed. Not very far in the future, AI is going to be better at all games barring games like Diplomacy that rely on free-form communication. (Of course, eventually AI will be better at those too, but that's a lot further off.)
So, we'll see how it goes with Starmourn. We definitely hope we've made it more resistant to gaining advantages via scripting, but we'll see!
The main thing is that other MUDs make pvp-scripting illegal in their policies, IRE games are the only MUDs I have personally played that allow you to do scripts for combat, some of them don't let you do scripts for -anything-. I'd personally love it if IRE would take this approach at least in PvP because... it just.. I mean what IF someone DID build the ultimate combat bot? Is that fair to the rest of the community who doesn't have 10+ years experience in coding?
They can make pvp-scripting illegal, and all it means is that the people who do best are those cheating to run scripts, since it's not possible for us to detect someone running a script. I dislike scripting in combat, but it's fundamentally not possible to stop in a MUD. All we know is that a command was entered. We have zero way of knowing whether a human or script did it, so the only scripting we make illegal is that which we can catch: People actually automating things while not at their keyboard. If we talk to you and you don't reply while continuing to bash monsters, for instance, we know you're scripting, but other than that, it's not possible for us to reliably detect.
I keep hearing this recurring theme about IRE games being P2W.
I expect to pay some money for a game I play every month but how much are we talking to be competitive (I like a blend of PvE and PvP)? If it's $20 bucks a month, that is fine. If it's 100s (or even 1000s like I have seen in some games) then I would be annoyed. Any one want to weigh in on this?
I am not an IRE veteran but I have played both graphical MMOs and MUDs. The type of 'ganking' the OP was asking about - well, I have ONLY seen it in the graphical MMOs. MUDs tend to be played by older, smarter and/or more mature people in general (at least in my experience). That doesn't mean you can't get your ass kicked if someone takes issue with you, lol.
> MUDs tend to be played by older, smarter and/or more mature people in general (at least in my experience). That doesn't mean you can't get your ass kicked if someone takes issue with you, lol.
All of our games have 'soft' rules around PvP, meaning that you can't just randomly kill people for no reason. Or rather, you can, as in the game code will let you, but you might end up getting sanctioned by the admin if someone complains and it's found you had no RP reason to kill the person. That said, there are exceptions. For instance, in Achaea, there are certain planes of existence where it's a free-for-all on PK, but you can simply not go there. We'll have a similar mix in Starmourn.
As far as how much you need to spend, I'll let others answer as any answer I give is going to inevitably be viewed as self-serving.
I will say, though, that we could give a newbie a leveled-up character with literally every advantage you can buy, and you'd still get your ass kicked by someone who has spent no money but has spent enough time to really understand combat.
Personally, I think the reality is that artifacts are there to give people an edge or some other benefit. The greater the benefit the higher the cost.
It's obviously true that a powerful artifact in the hands of a newbie or low-tier combatant isn't likely to save them from a mid to high tier combatant. But also, with everything else the same between two high tier combatants, the one with artifacts may be attacking faster, doing more damage, their effects may be stronger (a bleeding affliction may bleed for more), they may have stronger defence, curatives might heal more health. If we see similar artifacts, they could also have multiple escape buttons
The impact is also variable, class capabilities come into the equation and as does how good the combatants are. In low-tier, the arti'd player could be more likely to win but some classes can be overwhelming in that tier that it doesn't make a difference.
Also like... lessons for skills are probably a major thing which you may need to spend money on.
EDIT: Just to clarify, there are non-combat artifacts around the place as well. This was focused more on combat.
Comments
I expect to pay some money for a game I play every month but how much are we talking to be competitive (I like a blend of PvE and PvP)? If it's $20 bucks a month, that is fine. If it's 100s (or even 1000s like I have seen in some games) then I would be annoyed. Any one want to weigh in on this?
I am not an IRE veteran but I have played both graphical MMOs and MUDs. The type of 'ganking' the OP was asking about - well, I have ONLY seen it in the graphical MMOs. MUDs tend to be played by older, smarter and/or more mature people in general (at least in my experience). That doesn't mean you can't get your ass kicked if someone takes issue with you, lol.
--Kodiax
All of our games have 'soft' rules around PvP, meaning that you can't just randomly kill people for no reason. Or rather, you can, as in the game code will let you, but you might end up getting sanctioned by the admin if someone complains and it's found you had no RP reason to kill the person. That said, there are exceptions. For instance, in Achaea, there are certain planes of existence where it's a free-for-all on PK, but you can simply not go there. We'll have a similar mix in Starmourn.
As far as how much you need to spend, I'll let others answer as any answer I give is going to inevitably be viewed as self-serving.
I will say, though, that we could give a newbie a leveled-up character with literally every advantage you can buy, and you'd still get your ass kicked by someone who has spent no money but has spent enough time to really understand combat.
It's obviously true that a powerful artifact in the hands of a newbie or low-tier combatant isn't likely to save them from a mid to high tier combatant.
But also, with everything else the same between two high tier combatants, the one with artifacts may be attacking faster, doing more damage, their effects may be stronger (a bleeding affliction may bleed for more), they may have stronger defence, curatives might heal more health.
If we see similar artifacts, they could also have multiple escape buttons
The impact is also variable, class capabilities come into the equation and as does how good the combatants are. In low-tier, the arti'd player could be more likely to win but some classes can be overwhelming in that tier that it doesn't make a difference.
Also like... lessons for skills are probably a major thing which you may need to spend money on.
EDIT: Just to clarify, there are non-combat artifacts around the place as well. This was focused more on combat.