#Proposal - COMBAT verb

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

pearl dagger
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I wrote this proposal for COMBAT verb expansion months ago, but kept thinking I'd refine it and make it better. And that I would catch up on Discord. That never happened. So, here's an incomplete proposal. 😄

https://gswiki.play.net/Proposal:COMBAT_verb

Problem

The combat system is complex and there is a barrier of entry for new players (“new” defined as either longevity of playing or in time spent learning mechanics) which can create frustration. There is a lack of understanding of how systems interrelate and players sometimes feel they don’t have agency to identify, understand, and effectively counter existing combat mechanics.

Goals

  • Demystify combat
  • Encourage the implementation of more tactics in combat from a design standpoint and from a player standpoint; as players are able to ascertain more information, they will feel they have more agency to think tactically, which will also encourage development of more creatures that require tactics.
  • Decrease the amount of prior knowledge required to understand combat by new players

Expansion

COMBAT <creature> returns:

  • Level
  • Armor sub group (number and name)
  • Weapon base
  • AS/DS for melee and bolt
  • CS/TD
  • SMR and SMR-D
  • Healthpoints
  • Immunities, susceptibilities, and resistances
  • Padding, weighting
  • Abilities
  • Boss Mob abilities

If necessary, this output could be tied to existing skills like Survival.

COMBAT DEFINE <level> returns:

  • A list of creatures with that level
Proposal:COMBAT verb
late shoal
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Some really good stuff here

steep grotto
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Is the intent that it would return live data like the current combat verb, or a snapshot of the baseline creature? If it's a snapshot it could be usable outside of combat so you could check in town before deciding whether or not to do a bounty, for example.

real flax
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new bard service: unlock permanent loresong on a creature

wary niche
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Added a thought on the Wiki. Adding it here as well.

I love this. Here's an idea to go alongside it. How about we include something like this within the Adventurer's Guild? I often find that I turn to the Wiki for details on creatures; why not have a Creature Master in the Adventurer's Guild whom players can ask about certain monsters in an area? That would bring newer players into the Guild fold earlier, since it could give them insight into new creatures/areas, and it certainly is within the flavor of what the Guild is about.

pearl dagger
wary niche
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Either way, I love the idea of helping players gain insight on creatures, and potentially demystifying combat a bit.

candid beacon
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Is any of this information supposed to be "secret" - at least for a length of time? e.g. Hinterwilds creatures upon release.

Just wondering if information would be populated on all creatures, or maybe after X number of them had been slain (RP reason could be adventurers reporting their findings back to the guild).

Maybe unnecessarily complicated, but was curious if players on the high end would want new grounds and creatures to be a mystery, at least for a little while.

pearl dagger
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You can derive all of this information by looking at creatures or the formulae, so I don't see where it would need to be secret for any reason. This would just make the information more accessible for people who do not know where to find the information or who are not skilled in math and things of that nature.

In addition, if I want to experience something as a mystery, I would just not type COMBAT <whatever>, so I could experience it organically first. 🙂 (This is also one of the reasons why my original intention was that you had to be standing in front of the creature to use it, although I also understand where it may want to be blocked for a period of time so people don't just cheese a new hunting ground.)

real flax
pearl dagger
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...Knowing him, he's probably methodically poking holes in all of my reasoning. 😭 With maybe a dash of scolding me to stop making the game too easy and people should have to figure things out. His typing is giving me anxiety! 😄 (Said with affection.)

real flax
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(I think now he's just typing a character every minute or two while he works in another window, to punish me for pointing it out)

faint loom
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My primary worry for a feature like this is how much it will become a tool for automation and how resource intensive it might be to use in a general sense, while being skeptical it would be used much in real time by players rather than e.g. scripts.

We aren't just surfacing static information here; many of these figures are dynamic and are baked directly into the combat system in some ways. Deriving all of that on demand outside a context where we're literally resolving combat mechanics could be problematic, especially when it would be woven into already-combat-heavy contexts. This could be overcome, but I am not sure the effort that would be involved; combat has evolved a lot internally over the years.

I do see the value in it from the player perspective, but also feel like it is another feature that erodes the immersive aspects of the game's design. I like the idea of learning about new creatures organically; as an anecdote I've been preparing to enter the Rift for the first time for the last five levels on one of my Wizards and that has been the most exciting bit of GS play I have experienced in quite a while! I am glad we have the wiki as a resource, as we once had long form guides and the like for spreading knowledge through the community (which, imho, does good work in bringing the community together!) I see the value of putting things in the game behind easy to use commands, but I worry about what we lose in the process.

I am a big fence sitter when it comes to "ivory tower" design philosophy in games; I do not want information squirreled away from players so they cannot find or use it, especially when there is opportunity cost involved that the player will not be able to realistically recover from, but that's what the wiki is for and why we have things like skill migration and FIXSKILLS. Our game is incredibly malleable and accessible in a way that lets you react to and apply new knowledge and understanding in ways a lot of others do not, especially in terms of character progression.

Doing research ahead of time to prepare to enter a new hunting ground to become familiar with it and create/adjust tactics sounds like good engagement. Rolling into a new hunting area on day one where everyone is green and untried and getting an info dump on every new creature with all of its vital statistics sounds pretty lame, imho. There is a lot of good in the sense of accomplishment in learning and understanding the finer details of a given interaction in the game, to struggle and overcome, and I worry that changes like this chip away at that in a way that leaves me, personally, dissatisfied.

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Not poking holes, just candidly sharing some opinions, as I do.

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Good news for you folks; no one cares what I think in here. 😄

pearl dagger
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I have some thoughts in response which I’m going to spend some thinking about and get back to this thread about. I appreciate your insight (especially on the resource intensity, but on all of it).

I care, Naos. You are logical, methodical, and intelligent. I don’t always agree with you, but that doesn’t diminish my respect for you.

faint loom
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I will point out that there is one piece of information that this would reveal that is not generally available -- the health total or maximums of creatures.

real flax
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Kind of funny, this is one of the oldest sets of player information I can remember looking for... I think the last version I ever bookmarked was https://www.jerrec.com/critters.htm

faint loom
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Ah, back when guides wouldn't talk about things like level directly. It was sweet in its own quaint little way.

real flax
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I like how when it came to maps, despite technical and coordination challenges, players have worked together and developed an immensely useful database. And when it comes to this, there's just an enormous amount more players could be doing to populate the wiki. Key information couldn't reasonably show up in an automated tool. Like the thing you need to know about swamp hags isn't their AS or SMR, it's, hey, what the heck is that kettle? The reasons I die in a new hunting ground from aren't "oh I thought the TD would be higher," it's "what the heck just happened?" Illoke... Red Forest... old Darkstone shenanigans... Those details wouldn't get pushed into a COMBAT verb without a staff member literally writing out the same information that could just go into the wiki. That'd require something more like ANALYZE than FORAGE SENSE. The really useful information (unusual creature scripts) is already sitting around, as is the mundane automatable information (AS, DS, TD, spells). Lying around, uncollated, in hundreds of players' brains and logs. 🤷

steep grotto
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Max health is nominally available for anything with under 600 max health, thanks to Pain.

wicked linden
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Hot Take? This information can be found on the wiki and it's not a good use of GM time.

pearl dagger
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We aren't just surfacing static information here; many of these figures are dynamic and are baked directly into the combat system in some ways. Deriving all of that on demand outside a context where we're literally resolving combat mechanics could be problematic, especially when it would be woven into already-combat-heavy contexts. This could be overcome, but I am not sure the effort that would be involved; combat has evolved a lot internally over the years. - Naos

This was really valuable information. I hadn't thought about the resource intensity of dynamic information.

I do see the value in it from the player perspective, but also feel like it is another feature that erodes the immersive aspects of the game's design. - Naos

I'm really intrigued by this idea that it erodes the immersive aspect of the game's design.

I find the systems frustrating at times because it takes so much time for me to detangle things that are going on - time spent outside of the game researching on the wiki only to find erroneous nearly-decade or decades-old information (anyone looked at the illusions page lately? or some of the pages affected by the AoE update that never got updated?) or information that was incorrectly input by players and never verified by GameMasters. If I can't find it on the wiki, then I come to the mechanics channel to usually get treated poorly by players (and sometimes staff!) and dragged into arguments or told what I should do instead of being given information to help me make a decision/learn.

Therefore, I find not having the information easily available to be even worse at eroding my immersion than having the information available and accessible.

I am glad we have the wiki as a resource, as we once had long form guides and the like for spreading knowledge through the community (which, imho, does good work in bringing the community together!) - Naos

but that's what the wiki is for - Naos

This idea actually came to me because I was spending so much time trying to update the wiki and getting really annoyed at not having the information I needed and spending so much of my time outside of the game trying to figure things out so that I could update the wiki for myself and for other players. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to create new pages for creature abilities so that I could link them to the templates and have correct information, and those pages just... don't exist. Sometimes they do exist but you're just not sure that they're even the right ability because the messaging is different enough to not be sure that's the underlying mechanic that came up. As one of the very few people in the past couple years who has touched creature pages... This doesn't just happen. It takes someone willing to detangle all the information and put it up there - and there are very rarely those someones currently.

(It will only let me post half my message at a time, so I'll do the second half in 5 minutes.)

severe glen
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yeah, worth seeing in context that darcena is one of the people who does update those wiki pages, pretty sure the hinterwilds critter pages are about 95-100% her work, and so this desire probably reflects the difficulty of collating that info and doing those updates

pearl dagger
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And when it comes to this, there's just an enormous amount more players could be doing to populate the wiki. - Gnurr

I agree. However, I've been trying to get that to happen for years. It hasn't been happening.

Key information couldn't reasonably show up in an automated tool. Like the thing you need to know about swamp hags isn't their AS or SMR, it's, hey, what the heck is that kettle? - Gnurr

This is what the creature abilities section was meant to be. "Summons kettles which...." That could also be an area mechanic which could have some way of finding the information, too.

Those details wouldn't get pushed into a COMBAT verb without a staff member literally writing out the same information that could just go into the wiki. - Gnurr

Correct. Exactly like the PSM 3.0 wiki tool which was built into the system and used to populate the wiki. Which can then be updated any time a creature is updated, inside of the game, and pushed by players to the wiki and knowing that it's verified and correct.

The really useful information (unusual creature scripts) is already sitting around, as is the mundane automatable information (AS, DS, TD, spells). Lying around, uncollated, in hundreds of players' brains and logs. 🤷

Agreed!

Okay. I need to finish this meeting and then come back. I'm kind of thinking out loud, and I'm not feeling defensive or married to anything.

faint loom
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I'm really intrigued by this idea that it erodes the immersive aspect of the game's design. Why I take this stance is that you are creating a command in the game (not a verb that does something in the context of your character and the game world, a command which provides information to the player) which gives the player information their character may have no way of knowing. Without the command, the player and character learn together in a way, which (for me) really dials in the immersion. When I roll through a hunting area that I, the player, know really well through and through, it isn't the same immersive experience as when I was learning the area the first time through. In most cases, though, there is enough difference (e.g. profession, race, equipment, skills, etc.) that I may need to employ new or altered tactics where the experience is "new" enough that I can feel in place.

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This mechanic could be accomplished in a fairly immersive way, but I think that the result would likely be complained about by players as being too cumbersome or not useful enough because it'd fundamentally require your character to learn the things the command is going to spit out to you.

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That's a big effort for a relatively small win in terms of gaining a mechanic that is both immersive and eventually useful.

steep grotto
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Yavs' NPC idea might solve both the immersion and the in-combat/automated bog down risk.
If the main concern is just getting the wiki updated, a GM could just spend an hour just pulling a giant data table and then dump that on us. It's the research time that prevents getting the wiki updated more than anything, and the information is more-or-less readily available. It's just inconvenient.

faint loom
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I agree if the motivation is to update the wiki it is likely easier and less effort overall to collect that information into a spreadsheet. Not sure if the Dev team would be interested in something like that.

steep grotto
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Maybe the test server could have a player-side critter spawner command added. That would actually be helpful for a bunch of stuff.

wicked linden
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I think if the data were more accessible the wiki would be updated.

severe quail
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Did someone say spreadsheet?

pearl dagger
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My motivation is to have accessible data to players. I don't particularly care how that data is displayed/given. Right now the information is not understandable to all. It is accessible to people who have a deep understanding of the combat systems and therefore can easily derive the information from what is given to them.

We've had the current solution of the wiki, populated by players in-the-know for players not-in-the-know, and it is not being updated/used. As Tikba mentioned, I have made most of the creature pages for several years now. I don't understand what in the heck is going on half the time to input the information into the wiki. I can only think of two other people in the past year and a half who have put any information on creatures into the wiki. One was Krakii, I think, putting in a couple combat statistics. And the other person, whose name I can't remember off the top of my head, has done a bit more than that but primarily some statistics.

Creature abilities are largely not populated/put on pages/understood in the same way because the data is more obscured.

My thought here was to create a way to make the information accessible easily to everyone, which would also lead to making the wiki easier to fill out (which will always have the ability for more context and tactics than an in-game command which spits out information). (I can also see how my idea is not an easy solve given the context of what Naos said and reminded us of regarding server resources, dynamic systems, and things otherwise in flux.)

How we get the accessible data doesn't matter to me, and if there is someone who is willing to take the table of information and put it into the wiki - and then continue to ask for that data and get it reliably from the dev team so that the wiki can continue to be updated correctly... then that would solve the need for accessible information available to all.

However, we also know that the wiki is often not updated (again, see the Illusions page from 2015 which hasn't been updated and many of the AoE pages from 2020 which had a GM assigned to them who was too busy to follow through).

severe quail
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Theres hundreds of thousands of calculations and permutations. It's not really visible to do via in game verbs you'd be stuck doing something like combat 120 AU full plate towe shield 130 shield block rate level+3 stunned, kneeling, shield wall 2.
Then again with 130 Au Aug chain large shield 130 shield block rate level+2 prone, stunned, web

steep grotto
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That seems like a very silly way to handle it, compared to combat hob shaman or ask beastmaster about bounty.

faint loom
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It would never be what Whirlin said. Parsing that alone would drive someone insane. I figured the ask was in real time against a specific instance of a creature in the room with you. If we are talking about a system that is e.g. in a library with a bestiary to read about creatures, that may be a more workable idea.

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(Not ruling out anything either. Just having a conversation.)

pearl dagger
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Either of the examples you gave Naos were in line with what I was imagining as well. Real time against a specific creature or some form of static information that could be accessed in-game.

My other interest, generally speaking, is also in making information available in-game when possible so that people can go to the wiki if they need further context, but they have an in-game starting point.

uneven drum
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The only thing I can think of when reading this topic is the Magic Lens item from the Tales series, a consumable item that you use on a monster to see its information and record it in a book.

cunning geode
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Warrior trick appraise reveals certain information about creatures as part of their guild training, such as stance, level within a certain range, and relative blood the creature has left within certain ranges.

real flax
pearl dagger
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I don't agree with your assessment, and I don't see that as necessary. People can give tactical information, historical information, regional information, and more on the wiki. This would be a simple output that could be transferred to the wiki very similar to how PSM 3.0 pages are done currently, populating the existing templates. Then from there, people can add context and information and give tactics. It would certainly not be a replacement for what the wiki can do.

And I can guarantee, as the person who does most of that work, that the wiki pages would then be accurate and complete because I would just copy/paste all the base information over easily and quickly.

In addition, you would have to be in front of the creature in order to get the data output. There is still a function to the wiki pages for multiple situations. I'm not sure why you would think there isn't.

steep grotto
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The first thing we did when the PSM3 stuff was updated was copy it all over to the wiki.

real flax
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Fair point, it'd get copied over -- I was thinking of the precalculated execute-from-town version, which I think would discourage visiting the wiki.

So, I think quite a bit about documentation as part of my work. I understand the desire to have greater info exposed from the game. I guess the message I get from 30 years of player documentation of creature features is that there's not actually that huge a demand for detailed stats on every creature in the game. Because if there were, more people would have stepped up over the last 10+ years of wiki. Many players take projects of this sort on for themselves. The info is out there. It's relatively easy to be incremental (add a bit on each creature) or huge (write a script to scrape all yer logs). It seems to me that there's just... rarely anyone willing to make much investment. And that makes me skeptical that it's a good use of GM time. Maybe there IS significant player interest and there's ALSO some reason that hasn't reliably translated into action but I don't see what it would be. Wiki friction?

steep grotto
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More likely it's the variable data. Between spells, randomization, even just stance, getting the correct numbers is a lot of work. And while having the numbers would be useful, it's not worth the hassle to any particular individual. I could pull the data from every critter in RR from my logs, but for the same reason, I don't really need to look at the numbers to know whether any given character is ready for hisskra.

real flax
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Yeah I was trying to browse a bit more just now through precap creatures to get a sense for what is and isn't well documented. Seems like a sorcerer or two has contributed to a pretty thorough documentation of their TDs. But maybe I'm wrong and the players ARE doing a good job of trying to identify the most important information... because, e.g., a TD, immunities, and any nasty maneuvers pretty much summarizes all a sorcerer needs to know.

Rereading the goals of the proposal... maybe Yavs is right to think less 'comprehensive spreadsheet,' more 'curated insights'? The local crusty old beastmaster knows n fun facts about a creature can help fill the role of the more experienced friend able to give you the details to spare you the deed. Which approach is more helpful for demystifying combat?

(And if combat is mysterious to you, is the aim that you run in, slam COMBAT X, and run out?)

pearl dagger
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I will add that part of my thought process is also informed by running the mentor events on mechanics with @uneven drum for awhile and hearing people talk about how they wish they had more understanding, but they don't even know where to start. A lot of the barrier was trying to derive information from formulae when people had iffy math skills. And not knowing where to access information.

steep grotto
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I think it's more just that all that stuff in the right sidebar on the wiki doesn't have any reason to be obfuscated.
In fact, it's not, the information is freely available in-game. If you need to know what a brown spinner's ranger TD is, you just cast 603 at it. But it's such a huge project to actually collect the data as players that it's just never been done. If you went and asked on the profession channels, somebody could probably pull any critter's TD for any circle. It just never made it on to the wiki and it might be off by any amount due to spells or randomization.
All the hunting strategies and unique abilities and weird nonsense on the left side of the wiki is more useful in the research sense, the numbers just tell you whether you're in the right range to go at all.

real flax
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Darcena, that's helpful context... it's a very different perspective from mine. As a new player we didn't have a wiki but I sure did have The Statistical Sorcerer's Guide to annotate, and I was never afraid to just... try & die.

uneven drum
pearl dagger
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With their own combat verb, they can at least compare the numbers. Hopefully greater than/less than isn't still too difficult. 😅

uneven drum
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I suppose what I'm getting at is...

In line with Naos' point about resource usage and Alastir's underlying point about finite time for GMs to work on anything, does it really need to be as comprehensive as what you're describing? Would it be sufficient to just know creature level?

severe glen
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in theory there is already a tool to tell you the approximate relative level of a creature, although admittedly it's not very precise

wicked linden
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You can already fine tune adv guild tasks to fall within a level range. And we have a long list of creatures and level on the wiki

steep grotto
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Realistically, even having all the numbers is only so helpful and everybody who's been playing knows perfectly well that you go straight to lesser minotaurs instead of mucking around in the second ring of red forest despite what the raw numbers tell you.
But for recently returned/new players or anybody who just wants to learn how the combat system actually works for the first time, there's not really much to work with. People are not prepared to do substantial original research, they mostly just follow the path of least resistance so anything that reduces that initial investment is helpful. Even trying to get people to learn the simplified Spirit Beast battle system has been an uphill battle.
Something like BESTIARY KOBOLD SHAMAN that just spat out a hard-coded stat block with ranges for everything would probably be just as useful as a live COMBAT analysis, but it's a bigger up-front project to get them all created and then a larger ongoing project to keep adding things. Same problem as the wiki, but shifted to GM-side.

hearty tangle
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One does not casually muck around in the second ring of red forest no matter the numbers this is true.

real flax
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Yeaaahhh Rheteger keeps asking me to fetch kids in the Inner Weald and I keep responding they're already dead.