Battle dynamic , Evil and Nice.

[Cogliostro]

Pisc, you wrote me that only attacking characters get advantages from the crits. What about the autohealfood part. Did you forget about the strong effect of that making it easier to defend against attacks?

That part of it is also working equally for everybody, and it's massively nerfing the aggressor. There are certain subtleties, that I'm aware of and that I explained already - in that post about why criticals are an advantage for aggressive characters.

The reason why critical hits would be in favour of the "evil" side is that normally our "Redbeards" have a ship or locked room - something like that - from where they pop out for a split second to launch their attack and then they are gone again, to hide. With critical hits they get the small chance of killing some of the opposing force once in a blue moon. As opposed to how it is now, when that's just not possible in that type of standoff at all. That's basically the only reason why I said it'd be in their favour - of course the "Redbeards" themselves would also be subject to critical hits from their enemies.

That is the point of it - we want it to be an advantage for aggressive characters, because autohealfood is an equal and opposite advantage for those on the defensive.

If you simply dislike randomness as such, then you shouldn't be mentioning that against the idea, because the critical hits suggested are based on character combat skill relation. ("Characters should kill characters, not randomness", says you above)

Responding in kind to Arenti, I will quip that it's clear that many good reasons (versus just pointless numbers of people) stand for this suggestion, I hope it gets accepted soon. But before that happens, in whatever form it might come around to happening, it'd be very helpful if you guys thought your objections out a bit more and if they're really good, put them in clear point by point format without padding it with useless essays about how you dislike aggressive characters or aggressive Suggestions forum posters like me.

Another thought: it might be very useful if everyone interested in the topic (for or against) came up with a realistic game scenario to illustrate what they want to praise or criticize about that pair of ideas (autoheal+criticals). This lets us move away from criticizing each other or what characters who plays (useless).

[Cogliostro]

Example scenario:

With autohealfood: A pirate attacks a sleepy town. Entering from the unlocked harbor, he hits the oldest/richest looking citizen and tries to drag him to his boat. That character had some healfood, so the damage is absorbed and he remains at full health. The pirate is unable to drag the unhurt character, and possibly his effort is totally thwarted by this. (he has maybe a chance hitting another rich-looking character, and hoping that one doesn't have healfood on their person).

That tactic, for one, is rather badly nerfed by the suggestion. Now we come to the value judgement: but was that tactic a good thing in the first place? Or just exploitation? And ok, if we nerf that very popular tactic, what do we give back to the aggressive characters?

[Dudel]

Anyway, although Dudel might not be completely accurate in every detail, he reproduces the general feel of this discussion pretty well.

My details are skewed/biased, yes. Sorry for that part. I was almost tempted to direct copy-paste things but that QUICKLY became tedious.

Ediit

Example

Redbeard comes off his ship and auto deaths the leader so he doesn't get a chance to auto-heal wanyway. Rebeard takes all the dead guys keys while everyone else is sleeping and rapes the town then leaves.

AWESOME!

[Cogliostro]

Assuming that the exact probabilistic chance of that happening is carefully balanced, what serious objection do you have to that scenario Dudel? It sounds legitimate and even necessary. Without the occasional ability to cause grief, what are all those pirates and other aggressives, but useless and pathetic distractions for invincible justice teams of guys in their 90ies with 3 xbows each?

[Dudel]

Assuming that the exact probabilistic chance of that happening is carefully balanced, what serious objection do you have to that scenario Dudel?

The problem is the "those types" are only looking to kill, murder, steal, rape, etc. I'm talking the PLAYER, not the character.

"But you said that even you had a character that liked to hurt etc, whats the-"

I've ONE character out of SEVEN who doesn't even actually kill other characters except sleepers. He makes threats but its rare they are actually carried out.

The PLAYERS, who would be encouraged by this and they DO NOT NEED ANY MORE ENCOURAGEMENT!

"Oh but who says you can say no one can do that Dudel?"

Again, my problem is the people who ONLY do that. This would encourage them FURTHER then it does already. I'm getting REALLY sick of repeating myself and I also DO NOT understand how you think its a good thing to let well RPed characters get killed by bloodthirsty RPless ones who are only looking for Cantrinian blood. This would discourage RP which is, in my and MANY OTHERS POV, not the point of Cantr.

Yeah its got combat, yeah its got violence and murder and rape etc etc etc but do we need to up the murder rate to that of NewYork to "have more fun"? RPing is about the fun.

"But they are Roleplaying bloodthirsty murderthieves, you say they can't?"

In short, yes that is what I say. BUT ITS HOW they do it is why I say "No puck that let us not encourage the behavior anymore."

This would discourage me, the player, from doing ANY fighting.

"But that's the idea!"

Right so "I" the "goodie" don't wanna stop "RedBeard" cause he already attacked me and "I" lived. So screw it, my character didn't die due to magic and I'm not risking him/her any further to catch some rampaging newspawn or twit who thinks Cantr is about the corpse pile. Let the loner take all the towns stuff, and go annoy someone else. He'll get killed eventually anyway but in the mean time he'll kill AT LEAST one person with his magic stick of auto death.

"BUT THAT'S THE IDEA! I want more murdering dumbasses in Cantr and this would help!"

In that case I suggest we simply reject the suggestion on that notion alone... also the fact that you have YET to even LOOK at any of the other examples that were given.

"Oh you just don't read, Dudel cause I "totally" said "I like my idea better" and moved on."

Um... is that "looking" or "glancing"?

Really, I'm done.

It sounds legitimate and even necessary. Without the occasional ability to cause grief, what are all those pirates and other aggressives, but useless and pathetic distractions for invincible justice teams of guys in their 90ies with 3 xbows each?

Grief casing is good. Auto-killing a character is not. Having pirates, which ALREADY EXIST in an annoying amount, and other "agressives" is also good. HOWEVER, it is the manner by which THESE TYPES behave that is the problem.

You get some guy to big for his britches who steals a bunch of stuff from a very active, strong and ably equipped town and want him to live? O.o

Okay fine, he lives but do we need to make that possibly by letting him SMASH someone with a crap load of stuff dead only to have himself die only a few moments later? I don't get it!

HOW DOES THIS HELP!?

"Oh but it would be rare! Its only to scare PLAYERS of the "goodies" out of killing the "baddies" so they can continue being "baddies" and rape murder and pillage."

RARE PER CHARACTER, MAYBE! Rare per town/location/pant size/whatever but it would be ooooh to common. Once people realized there was even the SLIGHTEST chance to get "lucky".

Heck I'm even tempted to spawn a character to prove my point on the subject! Just try a bunch of doors until I find one open with lots of big weapons in it and take them all then swing at everyone in town... maybe I might lock my character in a building so he can slowly get untired and try again. OR MAYBE my character could find some tea and omit being tired all together!

How many 100% hits do you think I could do say... in a week just doing this... there? How many characters do you think I could "crit hit" and auto kill doing that if it were implemented?

[Cogliostro]

Yes, I advocate the point of view that morally bad characters can be and often are played by very good players. So that it makes no sense to arbitrarily limit "badness" in the game using game mechanics, just because most people play relatively "good" characters and they are afraid for their safety. In an exciting and dynamic game world where combat is a serious thing and not just a weird perfectly safe ritual exchange, they should be afraid (within reason of course).

How many criticals someone can hope to score on average during let's say a week of attacking solo is a good question, that we might need to calculate - just under less contrived conditions, to get a proper perpective and realistic estimate.(there aren't any open buildings with weapon stockpiles, nor with tea, at every location).

Remember also that a critical doesn't always cause death. It causes a significant increase in damage. One hit death would only come for the victim if you have 1) the best gear in Cantr 2) excellent combat skill. 3) it's your lucky day.

How much more limitation do you need? It's well within bounds, it seems to me, when carefully limited that way.

[Dudel]

You remove the chance to EVER EVER auto-kill a character even on a random Tuesday next year but only if you are wearing a blue shirt with orange sneakers, Captain American underpants and matching slippers, while drinking strawberry milk and partially blind... and I'll put my hat in the ring with you.

I don't even want to see that slight, itty-bitty, tiny, microscopic chance... sorry.

I'm also talking...

Character has 5% damage and "baddie" does 99% damage... etc etc etc.

[Cogliostro]

Yeah, I definitely get that you don't want it. The question is why? If just because, then that's irrelevant. But if there are important reasons behind that which you maybe haven't articulated yet, then that's important to put out here.

Maybe you can convert all that intuitive dislike for the idea into something solid if you tried?

At first I also experienced the same intuitive dislike, but then I realized it was welling up simply because I was thinking about having a character I've put so much into just die one day due to a lucky hit from some punk with a battle axe. The instantness of it irked me the worst, the way I could do nothing about it, the way it was EASY for the punk to cut short that long life I worked to imagine and build. But is that fair to the idea? Thinking that way and judging general ideas based on that bias? I think not. Once I saw that I was fooling myself, I was able to suppress that intuitive dislike and see the many merits of the possibility of criticals, especially for its ability to unnerf and dynamize the current combat system without requiring a lot of new code.

Our job is to make the probability of a critical sufficiently low, while preserving the occasional tragic moment. Meanwhile the autohealfood part will actually greatly reduce character mortality across the board, including from animal attacks, inherently, and due to allowing others to pass healfood to a suffering character to help them.

[Rebma]

He (along with others-myself included) has given you plenty of his reasoning why he is against. Try reading. Or if you're not going to actually read and try to put yourself into another posters shoes to understand, then stop posting.

EDIT:Who was that other guy who used to suggest things and then not read a word of a reply, and not understand what anyone was saying, no matter how you tried to explain it, and even though everyone else understood it fine? I think this is the same scenario, a lost cause...I'll no longer be reading this topic, since he's not actually caring about reading, and trying to take head of helpful alterations.\, and dislike/like reasoning.

[Dudel]

Firstly, Cogliostro, you need to stop being condescending and/or insulting..

Secondly, I have given many reasons as to "why" and you have only each time said "Nu-uh that is a good thing" and shook your head.

I really am done.

[Cogliostro]

Funny you should write that Rebma19. I studied your post, but only had to conclude you didn't read my earlier ones which explained pretty clearly why all the points you'd personally made "against" were not very reasonable. They were repeats, but you didn't know since you didn't have time to read everything that went before in the long discussion. That's why I didn't write anything in response.

I'm glad you're done, Dudel, especially if you're done with:

being condescending and/or insulting..

I have that thorn in my eye, but talk about not seeing the log in your own ... I'm not glad that still all the objections I've got to work with are stuff like "no,no,no!" and people's irrational personal bias.

A really good objection takes the idea to a new plane, by posing a real problem so that our collective mind can tackle its solution. Without knowing the problem, you can't improve the thing.