Aeon

Drastrath

There is a massive problem with aeon. It has been brought up several times prior. Aeon may work fine in 1v1 combat, but it is too strong in group combat. The fact that aeon bottlenecks your curing commands into virtually a single balance + 1 second delay is much more strong than any other affliction in the game except maybe sleep, but metawake has taken care of that. Aeon also virtually breaks SSC which is pretty much the same problem as sap. This virtually makes the two strongest classes in the game Shadowdancer and Institute by leaps and bounds. There is virtually no 1v1 combat in Lusternia, so this is strictly about group combat both large and small. 

My suggestion is to remove the "Further, entering a new command while attempting to complete an action will overwrite the prior action." If this is too much of a nerf then you could increase the delay from 1 second without bottlenecking curing and breaking SSC. 

Keegan

I think aeon is probably in the best place it has been in years. If people are concerned that aeonfield is too strong, I'm happy to look into changing that, but reworking aeon at this point means both reworking twist and timewarp again, both of which have been very recently changed for the nth time. 

I have noticed that you tend to cure aeon much slower than others and that it's significantly easier to stick you in aeon. It's possible you're doing something like sending 'stand' before your attacks, which would cause your aeon delay to stagger on attempts. 

Nyana

Aeon does not break SSC. It does tend to break without an artifact pipe, but I assume you have that. If you're doing a lot of commands right after being inflicted with it, that will make it impossible for SSC to cure. I started clearing my queue after getting hit with aeon, and getting better at upkeeping quicksilver. Back in my days on a different IRE mud pking, I used to cure aeon manually. It can be done.

There are multiple skill combinations in Lusternia that are extremely powerful together. Two moondancers can be OP, or one with a Nihilist. Two shadowdancers and two institute users are also a great combination, and a single bard using perfectfifth is obnoxious in any group - but balancing ALL of group combat would require making it so that 1v1 combat is impossible for every class. That could be done, but it would require a lot more work. And it would suck for those who like 1v1 combat.

Zagreus

SSC struggles or dies in various situations under aeon/blackout/impales/sap still. Wasn't the point of SSC to let people cure without a complicated system? Right now people have mashups on the spectrum of no SSC to hybrid system+SSC. I tend to doubt anyone uses it exclusively without having a ton of issues.

Without specific comments about class aeon implementation, aeon as an aff is okay. I think the SSC issues make it seem a lot worse.

Xenthos

Finishing SSC would be nice...

Makai

Keegan touched on it a bit already, but I'll try to explain how SSC handles aeon right now, since any kind of combat I do is exclusively through SSC.

1) Check for steam in pipe
2) Check for pipe being lit
3) Start smoking pipe with steam
4) Pause any other curing SSC would do

That fourth one is key, SSC knows how to handle aeon, but the moment you take an action that isn't trying to kill at enemy player, it takes the place of the smoking steam and feels harsh.

Drastrath

Makai said:

Keegan touched on it a bit already, but I'll try to explain how SSC handles aeon right now, since any kind of combat I do is exclusively through SSC.

1) Check for steam in pipe
2) Check for pipe being lit
3) Start smoking pipe with steam
4) Pause any other curing SSC would do

That fourth one is key, SSC knows how to handle aeon, but the moment you take an action that isn't trying to kill at enemy player, it takes the place of the smoking steam and feels harsh.

That's the issue. It is a mechanic that requires a good deal of making sure MMF and SSC play nice if that is the setup you are using.  The effort to produce a super clean system is really in my opinion exactly what the combat overall and SSC was to lessen. The entire mechanic seems to punish way too harshly. Now, I will beat my head against my setup and figure it out, but if the goal is to make combat accessible then aeon most certainly goes against this for anyone that isn't a coder by trade. 

Another option to fix this would be don't replace and restart if another command is received just ignore the new command and complete the first command. 

Keegan

I think having a steam artifact pipe is pretty essential. If you don't have one, and want to participate in pvp a lot, I would definitely recommend putting your next few days of dailycredits towards one.

I don't think that there's really an issue with the aeon delay and command staggering with it. 

When I was fighting you in the last timequake I was able to timechant aeon, then malefact asthma after recovering balance, and you didn't actively complete a cure until 7 seconds after that. There definitely seems to be something you're manually doing to offset aeon in some places. 

Orael

I agree that SSC isn't the greatest system ever.

To be blunt, it was implemented prematurely. Everything should have been converted to the aff/def systems first and then we should have put in SSC.  Converting things to the aff/def system though is tedious and time-consuming for minimal return value. Done right, the differences in game would only be QoL changes (gmcp messages, affs/def info etc) .

It's certainly something I'm interested in completing, but to take that on would mean other things would be delayed.

That said, it should cure aeon just fine. I'm sure there are unique situations that can trick it and make it falter pretty majorly (I'd guess the symptom line stuff has a big part of that) but in general, as long as you are letting it cure (and not sending other curing type commands), it should do it.

Drastrath

Keegan said:

I think having a steam artifact pipe is pretty essential. If you don't have one, and want to participate in pvp a lot, I would definitely recommend putting your next few days of dailycredits towards one.

I don't think that there's really an issue with the aeon delay and command staggering with it. 

When I was fighting you in the last timequake I was able to timechant aeon, then malefact asthma after recovering balance, and you didn't actively complete a cure until 7 seconds after that. There definitely seems to be something you're manually doing to offset aeon in some places. 

There is an issue with my system. That is the point. It is not a simple fix. No other mechanic in the game will punish you this harshly for a flaw in an automated system. Aeon requires not extensive curing itself, but requires everything else be paused in order to deal with that. For non coders, it is extremely harsh and unforgiving. 

The mechanic is not only a curing delay (which is okay). It is also a rogue command check which if you have a nicely coded curing system is easily dealt with, but any rogue def commands standup, writhe, etc. delays the cure. Making dealing with aeon for a non-coder bad news. This could simply be resolved by the command not being replaced by future commands.

The reason I have an issue is not with SSC curing aeon. It is all the issues that you have to code around. 

Edit: Grammatical Corrections

Pysynne

I have never coded anything special for Aeon, I use SSC, I have never had issues with curing Aeon. What I do have issues with is how easy it is to keep re-applying Aeon.

Drastrath

Pysynne said:

I have never coded anything special for Aeon, I use SSC, I have never had issues with curing Aeon. What I do have issues with is how easy it is to keep re-applying Aeon.

Did you code your own keepup stuff?

Minkahmet

While I'm not going to go into detail or give a thesis on aeon, but I do think it is fine in its current state considering how close to two decades now until recently of how aeon would just be that problematic for group pk, but fine for solos to which is non-existent nowadays. (Why can't we have those anymore?)

Drastrath

Minkahmet said:

While I'm not going to go into detail or give a thesis on aeon, but I do think it is fine in its current state considering how close to two decades now until recently of how aeon would just be that problematic for group pk, but fine for solos to which is non-existent nowadays. (Why can't we have those anymore?)

1v1. Yes, please. Understanding that all classes are not equal currently, a healthy 1v1 would really help with ironing out kinks in systems and help with insight to balance issues. 

Pysynne

Drastrath said:

Pysynne said:

I have never coded anything special for Aeon, I use SSC, I have never had issues with curing Aeon. What I do have issues with is how easy it is to keep re-applying Aeon.

Did you code your own keepup stuff?

no

Makai

1v1 just doesn't happen because some classes just either don't have a kill method, or require to use their tertiary for it. I wish that was the real reason though ... real reason is because people just don't want a 1v1, someone in that fight will get help, asked for or not, and it turns into group combat. Not to mention, having a battle partner is fun, if we had 2v2 I think that would be the smallest scale combat, otherwise stuck to Wargames 3v3.

Minkahmet

Makai said:

1v1 just doesn't happen because some classes just either don't have a kill method, or require to use their tertiary for it. I wish that was the real reason though ... real reason is because people just don't want a 1v1, someone in that fight will get help, asked for or not, and it turns into group combat. Not to mention, having a battle partner is fun, if we had 2v2 I think that would be the smallest scale combat, otherwise stuck to Wargames 3v3.

That's definitely true with reports gearing skills toward teaming methods and lol-easy escapes that classes you want to play for 1v1 became completely non-existent, to which it was always a favorite thing of mine and a measure of personal skill against another player without devolving into the inevitable method of dying when faced by two or more people. So its a huge mess. Do I want to 1v1? Yes. Is it going to happen with classes I want? Only certain ones.  Despite MD/SD being boring, but they do excel in both fields of play throughout reports of changes in the skillsets. Which was the main reason why I did Moondancer or Shadowdancing was because of that freedom to 1v1 anyone I wanted and was able to keep up and even chances of winning as much as losing. Though I'll not divert further from the topic here of aeon! 

Enya

Beyond balance concerns there just aren't any incentives to fight 1v1. The only mechanic that supports 1v1 fighting is arena sparring, everything else heavily disincentivizes it.

Nyana

Makai said:

1v1 just doesn't happen because some classes just either don't have a kill method, or require to use their tertiary for it. I wish that was the real reason though ... real reason is because people just don't want a 1v1, someone in that fight will get help, asked for or not, and it turns into group combat. Not to mention, having a battle partner is fun, if we had 2v2 I think that would be the smallest scale combat, otherwise stuck to Wargames 3v3.

2v2 is really the most fun, imo. Few enough people that you don't have to worry about keeping everyone together, but you don't have to do everything alone. That, and many classes struggle to kill anyone alone anyway.

SSC shouldn't spam 'light pipes' if you don't have an artifact pipe, though. It's enough of a hassle keeping pipes lit when you have to have equilibrium to do it... ideally it would upkeep that for you.

Makai

Not to mention you can't light pipes underwater, thanks realism!