Healing food being awkward.

[Cogliostro]

I am wondering, why doesn't healing food (if it's present on the character) get eaten/applied automatically when the character suffers damage?

It just seems extremely weird that in the "asynchronous" world of Cantr, I'm obliged to sit around and babysit character's health every time they are in some fight. What if I was away doing other things? Doesn't seem fair that the more "active" characters should simply be able to take down the others by striking them at bad times for the player. Several times it happened to me that I lost Cantr-fights and characters because for some reason I couldn't click things as fast as other players, and the eat-heal-food button lagged out.

A obvious issue then occured to me: what if there are many different kinds of healing foods in the inventory? But the answer seems easy enough, just eat the more bulky type first, as it is with normal food.

Why isn't it like that?

[Elros]

Because it would make it too hard to kill another character, especially a sleepy one. All they would have to do is stock up on some good healing food and you could spend years attacking them everyday while they slept and still could not kill them... So, the current way requires them to be semi-active, at least awake enough to eat some healing food.

[Cogliostro]

So Elros, explain me this. By you, is it too hard now to kill an active character loaded up with decent healing foods?

You see the problem, right? We know that whole "too hard to kill" situation happens anyways, it's the nature of healing food as such. If you refresh fast and have enough of it, it'll be your invincible shield. The only thing for discussion is why should someone be forced (or required) by the game to be "active" in this sense of refreshing like crazy and babysitting the fights. It seems like for your part you're saying: "let the more active clicker always have the big edge, they deserve it". Why do they deserve it?

Isn't Cantr about something else, rather than fast clicking?

There was a kind of "sleepers suck" theme in your post. Everyone agrees, but in this case, what if we're talking of a very fine roleplayer and a character loved by many, whose only fault is that their player doesn't log in every 10 minutes to check up on the fight? Maybe they can't do that for a good reason; and we shouldn't equate such a player with the general "useless sleepers" whom everyone likes to disdain.

[Idriveayugo]

Automatically eating healing food would ruin the game. It's hard enough to assassinate people already.

[Cogliostro]

I think you're right that it would ruin a lot of the so called "gank" assasinations, where a band of players who are all active at the same time (which if you think about it, can always only be due to OOC reasons - even when it's not an actual CRB), attack a single character leaving them no chance to fight back, use their healing food, or RP anything.

What I'm trying to figure out is why this gank assasination (against which there's no defense) is a good thing that we must lovingly preserve. The active players CAN be "invincible" with their heal food, so why can't the less active ones? Yeah, everyone hates sleepers, but what if they're not sleepers at all, and just aren't active at the time or uninterested in being at the Cantr terminal 24/7 like some players I know?

Joo better not be reading this, else by next week there'll be a tool to refresh your character automatically every 1ms and if a health loss is detected, it clicks the "eat" button on your heal food with about a 0.00023ms delay. This is just an example of how ridiculous things can get when you have "fast clicker = winner" principle built into the gameplay.

[Cogliostro]

And lets hope Joo never finds out there could also be:
AutoEat V2.0, now with Crossbow extension (eats your onions AND shoots back)...
JooAssasinator, where several players OOC decide to run an application that turns their band of characters into a killer gang, which moves in perfect synchrony, and attacks the designated enemy with 0.0023ms delay between individual attacks, without any of the players even being at their computers at the time. No CRB there, either, just "assasination" as you call it, guys.

Why not, right? Now that would be awesome assasination gameplay!

[Elros]

Cogliostro, once you have played the game for a few years and have a in-depth grasp on the game mechanics I think you will understand better why automatic healing would not be a good idea. It would throw the fighting off-balance.

I will step back though and let some other veteran players comment as well, but I believe you will see similar responses from most all of them...

[joo]

Joo better not be reading this, else by next week there'll be a tool to refresh your character automatically every 1ms and if a health loss is detected, it clicks the "eat" button on your heal food with about a 0.00023ms delay.

Actually I did think about it theoretically (especially since knickers is working on a Perl class which would make it pretty easy), however something like that would go against my principles.

[Cogliostro]

Elros, I'm pretty sure I'm an older player than you are. Who cares, though. The big point here is not how we all like Cantr just the way it is, but to notice through those blinders of ours that the game fighting IS off-balance, and needs to be thrown - the other way. So it's not as offensive to the Cantr player who isn't into clickfests, for whom every other feature in the game was implemented in the first place.

[Elros]

however something like that would go against my principles.

I am, glad to hear that Joo. I believe that would defeat the point of the game. This game is RP centered not some level-up power training game. Good to see that you respect it for what it is.

[Cogliostro]

that would go against my principles

Good old Joo. That probably means it'll be $10.


I must still be missing something - where is the RP in having your character die in a gank attack? It's like you're saying that the majority of players (who are not obsessively refreshing every 1 minute) do not deserve a fair chance to use all their avaialble resources against the attackers. Only clickfesters deserve it. But why do you think that? I can't understand.

[joo]

LOL!

[Cogliostro]

I dunno guys, maybe it's some exotic balance thing, like you say. Where assuming that most people won't bother to "clickfest", there's some kind of balance that sorta allows "assasinations" to succeed and yet also those who are hardcore clickfesters, can defend themselves against it, if prepared.

But even so, it's pretty clear in my head how it might be really important for the playing field to be level. So that if I prepared some healing food, it should save me while it lasts, regardless of whether I'm sitting there clicking it, and regardless of whether I'm attacker or defender. Otherwise, why was I preparing it? And why must my friends stand there watching me being attacked, unable to do anything to help me, until I log in and click that "eat" button on the healing food?

We all don't like "clickfesting", right? It's such a waste of time and human energy. But then why are we requiring it from players, practically forcing them into it - if they want their characters to live?

[joo]

Two wrongs don't make a right.

[*Wiro]

principles.

????