Cogliostro wrote:Surely Cantr isn't secretly a torture device used for extracting roleplaying out of people BY FORCE. Very Happy Very Happy Very Happy And you say that forcing players into staying up nights for the exclusive reason of clicking that "EAT" button on healing food is the right way to treat human beings with lives etc. etc.? No, it's obvious that "eat" button being manual does nothing to improve or increase roleplaying. It just means the more episodic players are disadvantaged and their characters will be unfairly a lot more likely to die in combat.
Although I personally think of rather strange to stay awake exclusively to click the "EAT" button constinously (and I should know after the amount of night attacks my chars suffered from the period of 1740-1940), since there is no such thing as continuous combat to require such efforts and all attacks after a first agression can be predicted as one day plus "x" (day+x). No need to pull this out of course, or so I expect.
Still, that means that except if you are attacked in the middle of the night, there is no need to enter in the middle of the night next day to check if you were attacked. And more, the button will stay functional all day, and not solely after midnight.
If this is based off anything, I would say that this argument was based off a particular situation lived a by a particular player, something that you have alredy said to not be worthy of being brought to the discussions here. Then this should be none of the business of the game development, it should be worked out by the player and his character solely.
Cogliostro wrote:I also hate the situation where you're hit by somebody just before you hit them and so your attack is now useless. Nothing could be more clickfesty than that situation.
Again this implementation is part of the game mechanics and has worked so far without any problems.
Cogliostro wrote:Similarly, I can't say I see your point with the "critical hits encourage solo gameplay" line of reasoning. First of all, all players in Cantr are solo players, let's just recognize that. The society-building comes when many people come together for a reason. There's absolutely no shortage of such reasons or places for people to come together in the game. There's no problem at all with the society building; the problem is with combat being so nerfed that it's a clockwork-like safe and utterly predictable mechanism! Where's the danger of skirmishes and extended battles? Where's the unexpected tragedy and unexpected success in it? It's gone. Ever since the damage was capped - but note, I agree with the damage cap. I am just suggesting a small chance (depending on battle skill) should be in there that would stop the cap from saving a person on the odd occasion. To make us players not be so cheap and willing to enter combat situations feeling, pretty much, invincible.
Yes, indeed, all players are solo players, both in the sense that humans are uncapable of developing hivemind and also in the sense that under the current individualistic society players tend to build their characters under a individualistic set of objectives, rather than engaging on more profound group actions which should be and are encouraged, at least nominally, by staff members. Critical hit is on the opposing way of this process.
There are a number of reasons of why combat is rather too shallow under current conditions, but I far as I believe and understand, none of it has to do with the combat pace (or also understood as "damage cap"), which is the only possible discussible variable (without entering scrutinist dialogue) that would be affected by the introduction of critical hit. The current system of combat suffers from a lack of both possibilities (game mechanics) and creativity (player action), relying in two primary tatics:
Raid Groups (Fast combat which relies on mobility and on medium-large groups of active soldiers to attack defenders at the same time, thus ignoring combat pace restrictions. Does not necessarily relies on large medicine stockpiles, as the enhanced mobility seeks to reduce effects of attrition and the possibility of enemy response, thus the potential damage made to troops)
Drag n' Hide (Counter-offensive actions relying on the avoidance of contact with the enemy force, trying to weaken the enemies enough to take them as prisioners and usually relying on stockpiled medicines to reduce effects of ocasional damage to troops).
However, it should be noticed that combat pace and the modifications to it are irrelevant in this scenario. Raid Groups is alredy a functional strategy built to
work over the combat pace restrictions, thus critical hit would be completely ignored. It would hardly influence the outcome of a battle since it is only a slight possibility against the alredy massive bonuses of ganking tatics.
Drag n' Hide wouldn't be largely affected in the same way because it is neutral to the restrictions: The target is being held prisioner, thus he will likely be killed no matter what happens.
Of course, there is special situations that will be proposed here, as "what if every attacker fires a critical hit?" or "what if all prisioners are killed by critical?", but let me remind that these are
special situations. On the big picture, such introduction wouldn't affect largely battles between groups: The only relevant change to my mind is that iniciative would be more valued in both sides to avoid any possible lucky strike and trying to harvest some for your side.
The idea of improving combat experience is valuable indeed, but I can't see how this would reduce clockwork. After all, combat isn't a complex thing in itself. It is all about striking the opponent and mantaining yourself supplied. What makes it complex are the variables (I.e. weather, terrain, disposition of forces, sunlight, humidity) that can affect both combat and logistics and adding ramdomness to the outcome: Low humidity can make your forces too tired, weakening them. Sudden rain may delay transports with medicine.
Cantr lacks these variables. What we have is combat almost in it's pure form, almost ramdomless, and with only some effective possible tactics based around other game features (I.e. combat restrictions and the inviolability of buildings). We wouldn't need then something based on alredy present features, we need brand new variables.
Cogliostro wrote:I sure would like to know how exactly you figured that a small chance of things going wrong in combat, suddenly will make (or "encourage) every second man or woman in Cantr to become a solo-oldbie-character-hitter.
Cogliostro, I fear that you are ignoring the subtleness of these measures and worse, ignoring my whole point. I'm not worried in any way by the fairly unrealistic scenario in which every single newspawn would become a killing machine. Because, enough said, it is unrealistic. And it's the last of my concerns on the matter. The problem of the implementation of critical hit is the emotional impact that it could have on players, far from the actual effects on the real status of the game reality. Simply, even though it is unlikely to happen, critical hit would be interesting for soloers? Undeniably! As it can be understood in your own "Redbeard" examples. And the simple existance of the possibility may affect players to become more open to become soloers due, something that could not be desired. This isn't about the rational possibility and statistic, about the actual effects of it's introduction in the game. It is about "man's unfailing capacity to believe what he prefers to be true, rather than what evidence proves to be likely and possible. We long for a caring universe which will save us from our childish mistakes, and in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary we will pin all our hopes on the slimmest of doubts." It is about the irrationality of men.
