The State of PK (and a couple other questions)

Dodger

What's PKing going to be like? Will it be similar to Achaea other than the couple of tidbits we've heard of? I know at least that there's gonna be server-side automated curing called 'wetware' and that there's a cover/positioning system for ranged/melee attacks (i.e. hiding behind stuff) but that's about it.

Also, for purposes of roleplay, how fresh is the memory of Earth for humans? Can we use modern Earth-related terms and ethnicities ,i.e. saying a character sounds English, or phrases like "French kiss"? Or will they have more fictional analogues?

Aurelius

It's similar-ish to Achaea in the sense of having afflictions and balance (though we got rid of equilibrium). Wetwiring, not wetware btw. And yep, there's a cover system that lets you hide behind things, climb on top of things so that someone on the ground can't use close-up abilities on you (and vice-versa) etc. We'll see how it shakes out. I'm sure it's going to be evolutionary in terms of changes once we release it in the wild.

As for Earth, it disappeared 921 years before the game opens, so it's not particularly fresh to Humans. They also have absolutely no reference material or media of any kind from Earth, so what Humans know about Earth today is purely based on whatever the Humans the Free Fleet kidnapped told others, accurately or not. At this point, there'd be no such thing as sounding English or French, for instance - those Earth-based distinctions would have long-ago disappeared.

Dodger

You got rid of equilibrium? So all actions work on only one balance now? Is there at least class balance?

Aurelius

Dodger said:

You got rid of equilibrium? So all actions work on only one balance now? Is there at least class balance?

No, it's not really needed. 

Qitorien

In terms of RP, one thing that I have begun to cultivate in characters I play is idiomatic-sounding phrases that make sense to the lore of a civilization. I find it a relatively easy way to gain some immersion for all involved. I don't think that was quite a response to your question, but something that might help someone thinking through the culture of language.

Cookie

Aurelius said:

...so what Humans know about Earth today is purely based on whatever the Humans the Free Fleet kidnapped told others, accurately or not. At this point, there'd be no such thing as sounding English or French, for instance - those Earth-based distinctions would have long-ago disappeared.

Oh my lovable stars. I can see the madness now.

"Yep. Legends told of the Burger King and his armies of Whopper Cows back on Earth.. His eternal struggle with the royals of R. McDonalds House tore countries asunder.."

Qitorien

Cookie said:

Aurelius said:

...so what Humans know about Earth today is purely based on whatever the Humans the Free Fleet kidnapped told others, accurately or not. At this point, there'd be no such thing as sounding English or French, for instance - those Earth-based distinctions would have long-ago disappeared.

Oh my lovable stars. I can see the madness now.

"Yep. Legends told of the Burger King and his armies of Whopper Cows back on Earth.. His eternal struggle with the royals of R. McDonalds House tore countries asunder.."

I literally lol'ed

Dodger

Aurelius said:

As for Earth, it disappeared 921 years before the game opens, so it's not particularly fresh to Humans. They also have absolutely no reference material or media of any kind from Earth, so what Humans know about Earth today is purely based on whatever the Humans the Free Fleet kidnapped told others, accurately or not. At this point, there'd be no such thing as sounding English or French, for instance - those Earth-based distinctions would have long-ago disappeared.

So there's no room for Earth-based slang or accents, then? What would a human sound like, or what kind of colloquial language would they use? I'm hoping to establish myself as a solid roleplayer, so I'd love to get as much info on the mannerisms as possible beyond "descendants of violent prisoners".

Anyway, the biggest thing I have about there not being equilibrium is that -- some classes in other IRE games could use abilities "off-balance" that would consume equilibrium but not require balance (dsl+battlecry comes to mind.) Is there going to be anything like that, or is it just being simplified to "one combat action per balance"?

Will we be able to refer to triggers/curing systems in-character as "wetwiring", i.e. selling custom wetwiring packages or something over market channels?

Arsentar

@Dodger I could be wrong, but what I took from what @Aurelius said is that slang itself exists, what doesnt exist is associating any particular slang or accent or way of speaking with being 'English' or 'French' since people would have no real reference to what speaking like an englishman means anymore. 

Dodger

Arsentar said:

@Dodger I could be wrong, but what I took from what @Aurelius said is that slang itself exists, what doesnt exist is associating any particular slang or accent or way of speaking with being 'English' or 'French' since people would have no real reference to what speaking like an englishman means anymore. 

For example, I play a human in a sci-fi game who speaks in a ridiculously laid-on-thick Australian dialect with an almost incomprehensible set of slang vocabulary, which does fit in with her "duct tape and prayers ramshackle outlaw fleet" faction pretty well alongside the American and occasionally English country accents. But since there's no Australia in that game, I have to refer to it as an "outback drawl", for example, rather than an "Australian accent". Is something like that doable in Starmourn, or have human ethnic differences been mostly homogenized?

Arsentar

Dodger said:

Arsentar said:

@Dodger I could be wrong, but what I took from what @Aurelius said is that slang itself exists, what doesnt exist is associating any particular slang or accent or way of speaking with being 'English' or 'French' since people would have no real reference to what speaking like an englishman means anymore. 

For example, I play a human in a sci-fi game who speaks in a ridiculously laid-on-thick Australian dialect with an almost incomprehensible set of slang vocabulary, which does fit in with her "duct tape and prayers ramshackle outlaw fleet" faction pretty well alongside the American and occasionally English country accents. But since there's no Australia in that game, I have to refer to it as an "outback drawl", for example, rather than an "Australian accent". Is something like that doable in Starmourn, or have human ethnic differences been mostly homogenized?

My bet is that you'd have to refer to it in a way that doesn't hearken back to how it would have been called on earth, because earth has long since been gone. So the slang itself can (mostly?) remain as is, but you'd have to refer to it in some other creative way. No 'outback' because thats a reference to Australia (I think?) and obviously no 'Australia' either. 'Near-incomprehensible Scatterhome ghetto drawl' maybe, or something like that.

But again, I could just be plain wrong.

Dodger

Arsentar said:

My bet is that you'd have to refer to it in a way that doesn't hearken back to how it would have been called on earth, because earth has long since been gone. So the slang itself can (mostly?) remain as is, but you'd have to refer to it in some other creative way. No 'outback' because thats a reference to Australia (I think?) and obviously no 'Australia' either. 'Near-incomprehensible Scatterhome ghetto drawl' maybe, or something like that.

But again, I could just be plain wrong.

"The Outback" is part of Australia, but "the outback" as a general word doesn't seem much different than "the bush" or "the country". To me, it'd seem like a generic enough term to use in an Australia-less world, but has a specific image that lets it define the character's dialect without being a direct reference to Earth things like, say, "cockney" or "southern" would be.

I'm unsure about bothering with accent/dialect stuff, but it'd help to get an idea of how to make my envisioned character distinct other than just being 'scrappy human outlaw'.

Khargal

Let's be tolerant. Humans shall speak Esperanto

Baedundariel

Khargal said:

Let's be tolerant. Humans shall speak Esperanto

FBI - Full blown Irish :awesome:

Indi

Why would you ever refer to your own accent anyway? You can type out your words in a french-inspired accent if you want, but to your character it's everyone else that speaks funny.

Jekk

Looking forward to see how combat goes. And to see how hunting goes!

Dodger

Indi said:

Why would you ever refer to your own accent anyway? You can type out your words in a french-inspired accent if you want, but to your character it's everyone else that speaks funny.

I, the player, would be referring to the character's accent in roleplay. "Pepper speaks with a distinctive country drawl", not "I'm Pepper, and I have a Southern accent".

Garryn

Dodger said:
Will we be able to refer to triggers/curing systems in-character as "wetwiring", i.e. selling custom wetwiring packages or something over market channels?

Just to avoid any confusion - while afflictions do exist, they work very differently from how Achaea and co do them. There will be no curing systems - or at least not anything similar to the Achaean ones.

Afflictions mostly play a supporting role to, well, something else. I'm just going to be all mysterious at this point, as to my knowledge the important combat mechanics haven't really been revealed yet.

Khargal

Like in Midkemia?

Tecton

Khargal said:

Like in Midkemia?

Not really!

Jericho

Is PK going to be exactly like Achaea, in regards to the huge learning curve? I was reading that thread on their forums the other day when Sarapis asked why newbies may shy away from combat.

Khargal

The problems of PK for newbies in Achaea and so on are lack of good macroses and lack of money for enough curatives

Jericho

Khargal said:

The problems of PK for newbies in Achaea and so on are lack of good macroses and lack of money for enough curatives

The unnecessary amount of spam comes to mind as well. Combat should have it's own channel that can be muted and or funneled into another window. 

Khargal

Well idea of being able to mute not needed channels is rather good

Kabaal

Combat focus is a thing on many other IREs. Aside from high-end dueling, you can group fight with basic frickin aliases in nearly every Imperian class, so the need for macros is suspect at best in these games if you're just talking participation. The learning curve should be high for the type of game it is, considering it seems like it's still the same general skill/three class skill setup with the addition of space combat and probably new questing/PvE mechanics not fully fleshed out in the other games for one reason or another.

I will agree, though, that timings could be much slower. Text is a horrible place for twitch gameplay, even if it's possible for those of us with dedication/coding ability/the right blend of insanities.

Baedundariel

I'm not a fan of combat systems, scripts, triggers, etc.  Would rather read and do the work myself.  Slower combat text would be a good thing for types like me. Or even a seperate text window for combat. Can't exactly ban systems unless Starmourn was only playable in a locked IRE client. I don't think my thoughts and ideas are very popular.  

Xiru

Baedundariel said:

I'm not a fan of combat systems, scripts, triggers, etc.  Would rather read and do the work myself.  Slower combat text would be a good thing for types like me. Or even a seperate text window for combat. Can't exactly ban systems unless Starmourn was only playable in a locked IRE client. I don't think my thoughts and ideas are very popular.  

Yeah, can't imagine they'd ban people from using the client of their choice. But even in Nexus you could share combat systems. Just fewer people script for it. 

I've never played solely for combat/PK but I dabbled in it. In Achaea there's a couple classes you can play without too much of a learning curve, and my offense was completely manual. At the very least, I'd expect that to be the case here too but we have Tecton and Sarapis on it, and from my experience they're both well-versed in balancing out the challenge of PK with having fun, and knowing the pitfalls of the other IRE games.

Pollivar

I believe there was something stated about how in hacking, if you use any kind of dictionary scripting to narrow down the choices as to what could possibly be remaining (a hangman solver is what i'd be thinking of) you are apparantly going to be permanently banned, as impossible as that would be to detect.

Here it is.

'For instance you may see “GA*GO*LE” and reasonably guess ‘gargoyle.’ We pull the password from a list of somewhere around 40,000 English words, so most players will never encounter the same password twice. Guessing the password incorrectly will cause immediate failure, causing expulsion from that grid and keeping you locked out of it for a period of time. Of course, we’re aware that people will cheat and use scripts to guess words with the least possible letters, but that will be strictly against the rules, and unlike some kinds of scripting, will be a bannable offense where we can catch it.'

Dodger

Baedundariel said:

I'm not a fan of combat systems, scripts, triggers, etc.  Would rather read and do the work myself.  Slower combat text would be a good thing for types like me. Or even a seperate text window for combat. Can't exactly ban systems unless Starmourn was only playable in a locked IRE client. I don't think my thoughts and ideas are very popular.  

IRE games have always been high-octane and fast-paced and people who play them learn to type quick and read even quicker. There's no gear barrier and even the people that spend hundreds of dollars on artifacts can be beaten by an unartifacted person that's more skilled than them. It's all about the player's skill and the ability to quickly and effectively collect and use information presented to you, and that's what makes IRE's balance and momentum-based combat better than, say, dice-based, stat-based, or turn-based combat.

Coding a system that helps collect that information, present it to you in a manner you can quickly and reflexively reference, and then streamline your input so that you can send commands faster and more accurately—this can make an already good player even better, and is a significant representation and effect of personal technical skill.

It's true that people without skill or coding capability can use other people's code—I started out using a friend's system that they coded for me. But until I learned to do it myself and created my own system that used my own input to send my own commands to the game, I would never be as effective as everyone else that did such a thing. It's like wearing a suit that isn't fitted for you: you're going to have a hard time walking around in it, and someone with a tailor-fitted suit they had designed themselves will be much more comfortable and more capable of getting around.

When you yourself code a combat system in IRE games, you are doing the work yourself. The only difference between you physically typing the commands out each time and you writing a script that types the commands out for you is that one of them just plain works better. Either way, you're the one that's inputting the commands, just in a faster and more efficient manner—and the player that is faster and more efficient will win every time.

In any case, you can code separate windows for inputs in clients like Mudlet, so that's no big hassle either.

Indi

Combat spam is a barrier not just to newbies, but to returning pvpers. I know how much time and practice it took me to be able to follow the text in every other ire game. I also know that it's spammier and faster NOW even with the provided tools to reduce it.

Also, writing the complex combat system the first time was fun. Even the next couple of iterations was ok... but it gets old. 

Ideally I'd like tools making it easier to capture a combat summary to a separate window. Also, condensing information into single lines where possible, especially if there are 'combo' classes.

Kabaal

https://i.snag.gy/XI6W3F.jpg

A bit ugly and always a WIP, but since UI displays were mentioned. I didn't bother with all the edging and borders out of laziness.

As a note, I'm generally willing to help people with Mudlet coding questions as I can. From the admin side, pleeeease make sure gmcp for everything relevant is in to eliminate mass trigger hunting (still waiting on gmcp.Action for Imperian coughcough).