(poll) Combat Deck System [UNOFFICIAL]

But you need to sink a lot of points into focus to be effective at it, my pole toon was dishing out the hurt with 5 points into focus...

and even this 5 points would not have been really needed (and even less so with slugs removed i guess...)

 

yeah it will be less harsh without armour slugs, and it becomes far less of an issue at higher levels.

 

Regarding macro'g, random decks may serve to help stop botting and combat-assist macros, but at a cost which is way too high for eyes off UI interfacing needs. Such logic is only a step away from concluding that because macro'g can exist there will be no combat period.

Instead, can we identify a more acceptable way of dealing with macro'g that works for the good guys that need fixed position interfacing? Detection: Devs could analyze macro timing and sequencing, monitor frequency and selection sequencing involving disabled RNG enabled keys, and look for active macro'g apps, app behaviors, monkeyed up device drivers, and installed mice, keyboard, etc., macro'g capabilities. These things may not prove 100% successful at detection, but would find more likely than not situations to generate a likelihood rating. This isn't new. All mmo's try to catch in these ways.

Human Challenge: Whether or not detection techniques are ever applied, in a perfect world a good scheme of human challenge would work behind the scenes while maintaining fixed key position interaction. Imagine, for example, a trip card in slot 1 can only be applied to a target's exposed leg status detectable only by looking at the blue glowing aura surrounding your opponent's leg. Without this status, the trip card can be pressed but will waste a cycle on a miss and expose your character to one or two glowing auras for the other player's exploitation. And such glowing leg may only appear immediately after a miss with a greatsword aiming for your chars head. Now imagine that parry, riposte, arm smash, stunning hammer to the head shot cards and so on, all slotted in positions 2-5 and beyond, and all requiring a blue status to become available. You could muscle memorize the positions. With that you could react when needed to select 1-5 as the blue aura moves around your target. Only one or two of such 5 might be useful at any cycle of time. In other words, real combat along with guiding aura's. Now, imagine what would happen to a bot or assist macro'r 6 feet under in no time, even against pseudo smart AI'g mobs. Ok, maybe I'm working too far beyond our "UI adjustment possibilities" for this game, but you get my point. A good randomizing function need not be associated with the fixed positions of the keys. They can be moved elsewhere at locations where the player wants their eyes to be -- on the target.

In a less perfect combat world, for example, to thwart macro'g and still provide fun, the human randomness challenge might be delivered only on occasion at random locations associated with our moving target or at random locations nearby. Failing to activate the challenge when it pops can have a positive, negative or game interrupting result, if so designed. For example, such random pops may deliver needed focus boosts or an occasional bonus to dps or healing output. Also, continuous failures to activate a challenge pop over time might help detect a higher likelihood of macro'g and such challenges might be enhanced or reach a challenge requirement (roadblock) level. For example, imagine immediately after a exiting combat mode, player is placed into a locked globe where they can complete a random mini-game for some advantage or stay therein forever until they do. Macro'rs will rot in there.

There are likely much better approaches than what I've suggested that could be adopted by devs to tackle macro'g and still keep the random and fixed decks in optimal, enhanced and fun forms.

 

That is an big like from me, better than the evil whack the mole solution

 

I would like to point out a SINGLE caveat to the "no swapping armor in combat rule". Define "in combat". Because in this game, and others, I have had the system glitch as one supremely distant enemy, outside it's leash range, unable to path to me, maintained aggro for excessive periods of time. Personally, if you want to swap your armor in combat with me I'm all for it. You get a massive slow penalty, a -100% to all your defenses, and it takes significant time. If I'm anywhere near you, the real penalty for swapping armor is that I stab you repeatedly while you are helpless. IF, on the other hand, you aren't actually IN COMBAT with me, but the game thinks you are, there's no reason someone hiding behind a wall, or 500 feet down the road, shouldn't be able to take off their gloves. Or their boots. Or their pants. Or their helm. And if they can get all that stuff off, why not their chestpiece? And as long as they are naked and unmolested, despite being "in combat", why couldn't they then put a new set on, one piece at a time? As long as the penalty is absolutely fatal to someone who is actually trading blows, it's not impossible. It's not like having me staring angrily at you actually makes your boot laces lock up with mystic force.

Of course, a much more sophisticated "in combat" definition for the computer would work as well. Maybe a timer since the last time you took damage from an attack...

 

Just so I'm clear, this is in no way hostile. I'm just providing some logical counters to your arguments.

Bots are third party software being employed to break the rules of the game. Their use is already a violation of the rules. The people employing them are already using extra software, sometimes even ILLEGAL software, to break the rules of the game. There is, therefore, NO program feature or game rule that can stop botting, because the botters don't care about the rules, and are able to employ a program counter to almost anything the devs employ within a day.

And I'm sure Portalarium will employ these features as well. This isn't a new idea.

THIS would be a beautiful combat system, dynamic, adaptive, innovative... and having absolutely nothing to do with the random deck system. Also, it sounds kinda twichy, as in fast reflexes required to play, as in significant numbers of backers would back-out due to a play system they could not use and had specifically objected to from day one.

Most bots are run from bot farms, where one player oversees twenty to fifty botted machines. That one player could then cycle from machine to machine, answering the "human challenge" at each, and then releasing it to roam freely. Botting is big business, and will continue to be for as long as wealthy first world players are willing to shell out real money for the bot's digital earnings.

Just to clarify, you seem to be using illegal botting and "macro'g" interchangeably. Macroing is not cheating. A macro is a small program that binds one or more commands to a single button.

An example would be the macro that allows me to copy/paste your quote phrase through this response, so that your words are highlighted in grey.

Another example would be the complex combat macros I built myself in WoW pre-Cataclysm, that (as one example) activated my primary attack power (which initiated auto-attack), marked my target with a big skull for the raid to see, and attempted to trigger my goblin rocket launcher gloves for some extra damage. Since the gloves didn't trigger global cooldown, or suffer from it, it would have been perfectly reasonable to have the primary attack power, the skull mark, and the glove activation on three seperate keys, say 3, 4, and 5, and just mash all three together. The game mechanics would let me do this. I just don't want to have to mash all three keys when a macro can tell the game to pretend that I am doing so, thus saving my fingers and my keyboard. The SAME macro, when I held down the [shift] key, would instead activate a totally different power, so that with a flick of my thumb, I could bring my second string finishing move to bear.

A final example would be the horrific attack pattern macro I built in the early days of Rift, which attempted to use my emergency life saving power (which could only be triggered if I was below 25% life), failing that would attempt to activate my lethal finishing move (which could only be used on opponents below 25% life), failing that would attempt my power hits or major self heals (each of which had a 6-30 second cooldown), failing all of those would do a basic zero cooldown strike, failing that would launch a ranged strike, and failing that (due to lack of targets) would cast a weak zero cooldown heal on me. THAT macro was damn near intelligent. It was cheating, pure and simple, and I submitted it to the game devs to point out how bad things could be. Granted, they didn't care. Granted, any player could make such a macro, or even cut and paste one from countless discussion boards, where "ideal builds" and "optimum rotations" were discussed. Granted, ultimately my cleverness and good strategies built that macro, allowing me to reap the benefit of my cleverness in every combat without straining my fingers on a video game. I'm still against such a macro system. It's too easy.

Botting is putting a computer in charge of your character. Completely. It's movement, it's speech, it's item use, it's combat, everything. Macroing is just making precision, custom controls. If the game doesn't allow excess in what the controls allow, macros won't be a problem. Botting will always be a problem, because it is used by those who seek to break the rules, both the code of conduct and the code in which the game is written.

 

first off, AWESOME post. great breakdown. a couple snags here, and i'll correct those real quicklike for ya.

GW2: those who did the most complaining didn't undertand how it worked. it was similar for just about every weapon type for your class, wehre you had your utilitiy skills vs where you had the damage skills, etc. once that learning curve was completed, it got really easy to play with only your perephrial vision on health bubble and flashing skills. - the split deck on either side of the bubble was great for easily discerning which key to hit on the keyboard to activate it.

many of the utility and damage skills are very powerful. if you used more than 5 slots, your character was simply too powerful and there was ZERO reason to group with anyone, you could solo everything. we did extensive testing on that during very-early alpha stages

the tapping of the skills, and getting longer cooldown, simply put, was a bug/exploit depending on how you looked at it. it should not have been an option - another similar one was hitting one skill, and almost instantly hitting another, to not have focus/magicka costs or timer between skill use. if i'm not mistaken those have been fixed in an earlier release (4 or 5, i left at 3).

combos: not for the single player, but in group structures, some skills had a "combo ability", meaning your group mates if close enough to you would see a floating icon on the screen indicating a specific combo is available, they hit X on the keyboard and it triggers. some of the combos were very neat, like the templar using nova, could trigger a supernova that just did MASSIVE damage as a finisher. there were really useful heals too, like blood altar that you cast that does a small HoT, but the group mates could hit X to pray at the altar for a much better heal - the y do it, and your regular blood altar effects last a shorter period of time.
we enjoyed, in my guild, the HECK out of those group combos.

closest thing was eso's group combos. see above for description.

i currently use only two decks. one for combat, and one for my "town gear" - i have no skills on it, just the gear i wear when not adventuring. if it were easy, during combat to swap to something else entirely bypassing town-wear during combat scenerios, i'd have three.

i'd like the option to turn off the skills, and ability to go into combat, with some decks..just for the outfit, essentially

or the more you mash it, to a certain point (1-5 as you said) the stronger the action is, but the longer the cooldown - not how many times you can DO it.. like doublestrike in blades, its already fairly powerful, i wouldn't want to be able to spam that six times and instakill something..but i'd like it to bump up the possibility of doing MORE damage based on some algorithym that uses both the total and existing health, if this is your opening move, or if this is a finishing move based on total and remaining mob health. - some would only flash if opening moves, others would only flash if finishers... - but i'd also want to not only hit the key multiple times, but also hold it down for the same effect.

say you have 5 stone fists, and you stack them all like this - that uses all five of the stone fists, so you can not place a single one anywhere else, correct? if so, that would be a good thing id think.

i'd prefer group-combos (similar to ESO) instead of single-player combos of seperate skills.. i'd personally consider nubmer 3 above to be the personal combo. - so mayyyyybe,: have 5 of stone fist, 4 of crushing blow, you can combo one of each, then only be able to autostack 4 of stone fist, and 3 of crushing blow for two slots on your bar..

 

after thinking of the last couple posts here - i'm hoping they kind of combine everything into one system again, and are only keeping them seperate so they can tweak them easier, then just blend 'em.

 

Agreed. While I respect the effort, and honestly the fixed deck option has kept me in the game, having two alternate control systems with differing resources, costs, play effects, and talent builds is an open admission that the proposed "innovation" of random ability decks isn't getting enough traction with the founding community. ANY organization that was told a proposed modification to its services would cause 40% of its customers to bail would IMMEDIATELY scrap said proposal, unless of course the consequence of doing so would result in even greater financial catastrophe.

 

I thought more in line of "Shooting arrows at you and when you come into mellee range slipping out of the comfy leather into full plate" swapping.
all other swapping i am not opposed to

 

in an attempt to be more clear on my last post above, i love the fact that the options exist..i just adore that concept. but realistically, it should just be one fluid set when the game goes gold. if they stick to multiple options, they'd need to make a very clear dileniation and possibly even video tutorials IN GAME (the mad hermit anyone!?) explaining not only how they work, but why they can work together, and that it is all about user preference instead of performance.

 

I really like the concept of the deck system, but I also agree that it takes away some of the the enjoyment of watching the fight because you are distracted by focusing on the deck.

 

Howdy! I just started playing this game again the other day after R14 came out, and have to say that the combat system seems light years better than my previous impressions. Yes, it could still use work, but I'm starting to see its potential. Not quite ready to sing its praises yet, but I do have to admit they are making GREAT strides towards improvement. Will probably stick to locked decks though for now at least; I still just don't see the fun of that deck mini-game.

 

Macro'g and bot'g can both be legal or illegal, depending on the devs designs. I was discussing thwarting bot'g and macro'g so I thought it was clear that I was addressing illegal versions of both. If I legally or illegally bot, I can hands off (afk) and my character repeats an interaction sequence over and over and over for advantage. As with bot'g, macro'g that is legal is only available if devs offer up such functionality. Illegal macro'g is when someone uses a programmable mouse, keyboard or add on software wherein clicking/pressing one button causes a carefully timed sequence of human user interface interactions that often yield some advantage.

No matter though, the point isn't what you name it, the issue is whether a user input stream is coming from program code (not as devs intended) or from a human interaction (as devs intended). Label it want you want, then we can move on to the issue. Someone previously mentioned that the random deck combats illegal program generated user input streams. But does it?

As can be appreciated, our current random deck makes stacking and combo'g very difficult for illegal side-saddle program code. Unfortunately, this difficulty also impacts legit humans in certain combat situations. Key spamming still works so the real impact will only be found in dps/performance output. Gold mining botters just won't care at all, will they? Slightly lower dps/performance will not prevent them from establishing their illegal botting circuits.

The random deck will cut down on illegal macro'g though. This is because the most common type of cheater using the illegal macro'g are not gold miners. They are ordinary joe's seeking competitive combat advantage over other players. Illegal macro'g with the random deck will offer only disadvantages (no stacks or combos), so competitive cheaters will not like this deck at all.

The current fixed deck option does nothing but possibly incentivize illegal program based UI control. A millisecond here and there via fine tuned program key selection and sequencing yields advantages that especially competitive macro'g cheaters will appreciate. With keying under illegal control, such a cheater will have freedom to focus more on movement and positioning, and not worry about mis-keying and key sequencing mistakes.

If we want to help devs refine our decks, especially the fixed deck, we should seek to suggest something that might help with fun factor while addressing illegal program UI control. So, while still offering fun gameplay, can anyone think of or identify a combat block-out feature that will thwart 40 gaming rigged bot characters managed by a single gold-mining cheater? That's the million koruna (CZK) question.

 

Another issue mentioned whose ship has likely sailed due to our current, advanced state of development: twitch play.

For clarity, I define twitch play as being reactive and often motion related play styles such as user interactions that repel/reflect incoming damage or otherwise buff/debuff. Dodge by double click direction rolling, defense and positioning through jump or double jumping, and blocking (or other response to an opponent's current visual action sequence) by key press or motion based reactions to the action sequence (visual cue), just to name a few. Twitch play often also includes hit-box area attacks replacing tab targeting, and with further enhancements such as positional requirements. Twitch cards also include a lot of motion moves requiring opponent motion counters just to stay on target.

Clearly, our current deck options and (tab) targeting are not very twitchy. Recent mmo's touting full on twitch UI combat do draw high initial interest, but many such offerings seem to fail to satisfy many players, especially those with lag issues and low-twitch skill levels compared to opponents. In such circumstances, twitch UI's are particularly punishing. So I understand our current non-twitchy design decisions, but does this mean we can't consider anything even a bit twitchy to enhance our current decks and combat play?

And could we somehow realize (and not only dream for) a more twitchy fixed deck paired through swapping with a less twitchy random deck (or vice versa)?

 

I would like to see that

 

Perhaps if swapping an item of armor or clothing had a timer, so that when you said swap chest an action bar appeared and your character was rooted (later to be relplaced with a spiffy animation), and if you tried to swap a complete set, you'd have to endure swap timer after swap timer. Not so long that we couldn't change comfortably out of combat, but none of this swapping from leather to plate in the middle of an opponent's charge.

 

As has been mentioned elsewhere in this forum, image recognition could be added to any illegal third party software to make it able to track the random ability deal faster and more accurately than human hands and eyes.

The problem remains. ANYTHING that the devs can program in can be programmed around by ambitious third parties. And once ONE gets it right, that cheat will be for sale in forums across the web. Worrying overmuch about blocking illegal programs wastes energy fighting something you cannot stop, like the now failing US laws against marajuana use. For decades police forces across the USA tried to stop grass roots marajuana use, and failed abysmally. The activity almost increased profits from illegal sales by driving up prices. It was a monumental waste. Changing policy now allows the government to collect taxes on LEGAL sales, and open competition is driving prices down. Arguments have been made that suggest both good and bad effects on the actual rate of use, but so far evidence suggests the user base is staying exactly the same.

To translate back into game world, making huge efforts to stop players from using third party programs is wasteful, every time the devs introduce a new feature to stop illegal program use, the writers of illegal programs will circumvent it in a month, tops. Just as vitally, the time spent by the devs on these useless pursuits is not spent on the GAME. I'd rather find a way of taxing goldfarmers, so that their in game actions could somehow be turned to our benefit. Beyond that, I honestly don't CARE. I've played in several MMOs now, and the only time the goldfarmers are a problem is when the game uses multiple currencies, especially ones linked to real world money.

As I've said elsewhere, I really don't care if someone else gets to play their way, even if it makes them more powerful than me. PVP is voluntary, actual cheating will be blocked routinely, but those who just find an advantageous way to play are welcome to it as far as I'm concerned.

 

Agree 100%

It is astonishing other options were not considered.

 

to sit there and say that those of us who dont like the deck are narrow minded is ridiculous, the deck makes no sense, you might as well just put a series of dice rolls on a 1d20 out there and let us do that instead, the deck system totally breaks any immersion in combat and the game, here i am fighting a big bad bear, oh wait I have to hurry and discard to get a better hand, aah there we go my 5 cards see your 5 cards.....wtf are we playing a card game or are we playing a video game world, where we are supposed to be living and breathing and experiencing the world? sorry but no, everything about SOta is living and creating and growing in the world and hten suddenly there is a card game to play every time i wanna swing my weapon....

I can understand wanting ot do something different.....but when you destroy all immersion to do so, your doing it wrong, do I have a better solution? no I do not, sorry


and BTW do we really think that this game is gonna be popular enough to where macroing is going to be an issue? or gold farmers? it never was in UO, I really dont think it will be here either.
you would have to bring this game out of the 80's and into the 2000's before any serious botter, or gold farmer or macroer would even consider spending time here