Potion Use and Other Tactics

[Under the moon]

Well, as to the open handed melee and fighing without pause, the system is flawed and too highly controlled by the server. It tells you not only when you hit, but where you hit, despite how your character may fight, or what style of fighing they use. In some styles of fighing, only one hand is used, while the other is held behind the back, or overhead for ballance. They could very well use that second hand to down potion after potion.

[zanzibar]

The whole system is kinda illogical though.  If you drink 50 potions and they disapear from your inventory, then that means that you dropped all the empty flasks.  That's a lot of litter!

[Nikodemus]

Oh come on, when did you try to drink somethink from a bottle last time? Not a plastic one, which will shrink as you drink. You know why it does? Because it happens when you don't let the air in. Now, try drink this way from a glass bottle after the first sip, shot, or whetever, hehe, the lower preasure will make it harder for you to make the next one. You need to let the air in and it takes time. I posted the small bottle of votka to visualise you the process of drinking. Just think how you drink a beer from a small bottle. Try to drink it as fast as possible and you will know how you would drink potions.
Besides, first you need to reach it and as pointed out you need free hand.
Another thing is how it tastes like. It is purely alchemical recepture (So bilbous, before you go with your instant magic effects of uber wonders, please be so kind and step away with it from alchemy, as there is a lot from chemistry and biology in it, what you know aren't magical forces i our universe. You have completly no arguments why magic should be instant, besides that you want it this way and you have such feeling ).
The element which speed up the process of assimilation is alcohol, so i won't be suprised of it wasn't part of the potion. Now think about the votka again, if you ever drank it, you know that it isn't good to drink a lot of it at once.

Shields. I have been fighting using a shield and i can assure anyone that holding it, you can do nothing else with that hand.

EDIT: There is also matter of what the HP really are.
While for me it is some kind of mix of level-of-being-tired/being-able-to-see-if-you-are-loosing-or-winning/being-trained-in-keeping-the focus-while-being-tired.
For others it is health. Extremaly simple explanation for people who are lost, when the logic is involved. Health which you can loose only after being badly hit, what basically means end of the fight. This makes wonder why the bar is ever necessary, coz you always loose it whole or none.
But that is talk for another discussion. A discussion like this one, which has many copies on these boards.

[Under the moon]

Hold up! I had not though of that before. So, you do not drink the potion, you EAT the entire thing like popcorn. Maybe it is not even liquid (can't recall if it says you drink one).

*edit* To Nikodemus: What makes you think they are made of glass? In medieval times, skins were used as liquid transport. Easily squeezable skins.

[zanzibar]

The element which speed up the process of assimilation is alcohol, so i won't be suprised of it wasn't part of the potion. Now think about the votka again, if you ever drank it, you know that it isn't good to drink a lot of it at once.

Lies!  Why must you lie so much, liar!?

[Nikodemus]

Lies!  Why must you lie so much, liar!?

To annoy your annoying and sarcastic mind. Now go back to your sandbox

Hold up! I had not though of that before. So, you do not drink the potion, you EAT the entire thing like popcorn. Maybe it is not even liquid (can't recall if it says you drink one).

*edit* To Nikodemus: What makes you think they are made of glass? In medieval times, skins were used as liquid transport. Easily squeezable skins.

The potions i see in game looks like from glass. It is indeed a good idea to make them from skins maybe.
But this brings a question why they aren't. Maybe they are from glass, because how fast you drink it doesn't really matter. I mean, 3 or 10 seconds doesn't make a difference, when the effect takes over a minute to finish . If the effect takes 10 seconds to end, the skins are a good solution, but i don't see that in-game. I gues it is up to the setting devs to decide how the potions work.

[bilbous]

Let's see, where to begin.

Apropos nothing in particular, I recall the ancient past when I was away at music camp to practice trombone. I made a few dollars by betting with the other campers that I could chug a 12 ounce bottle of water in less than 10 seconds. I never once lost the bet. Now they didn't sell bottled water in those days, I had to use a coke bottle filled from a tap. So let us say for arguments sake that a potion is six ounces, I could chug that in five seconds wihich is less than one second in game. Kind of silly to argue because we don't know how big a potion is and any accounting of the time dilation is affected by the discrepancies between the times different things take. There is no 1:1 correlation possible that takes into account all possible actions.

Now as far as alchemical/enchantment basis of the potion is concerned I did kind of deal with that already as I indicated that I though the potions were magical in kind. You say there is no instant effect with magic, I beg to differ. If you cast a spell the effect is normally instantaneous. The casting takes some time and may not succed but once it does the effect is normally immediate. When you complete the defensive wind spell your magical protection affect is added to your base defense, likewise rock armor. When you cast summon missile, flame burst, weakness or freeze the effect is immediate, in the case of freeze it lasts a while but starts right away. The thing about enchantments is that all the time consuming stuff is taken during the enchantment and the effect is held until the item is activated. In the case of a magical potion the activation happens with the drinking. In the case of a sword it happens with weilding the weapon in some cases (stat boost) or hitting an enemy (extra damage) in other cases.

EDIT
Humorous rant rmoved due to subsequent circumstances (edits etc.).

[Nikodemus]

I thought we are actually talking and listening to others points.

I have no idea what is 12 ounce. The world universal standard, norm is a litre [l] Hopefully i know how big is a coke bottle
Anyway, i suppose coke bottles were glass, if they were plastic, lets just say you shouldn't have write all this. I think 5 seconds sounds like right to drink a potion. I think you can hit your opponet 3 times within these 5 seconds. It is hard to drink, dodge and swing with weapon at the same time. It is what i was trying to point out.

The in game spells... I realise we are all guessing here and i'm taking a gues that the way spells work is going to change. Nothing in a world is happening instantly, it is always taking time. Even when you cast an arrow, it must take time before it reach the enemy and then go through his body. It takes time. much less than a second, but still. Different spells cause different effect. Lets take weakness and freeze as example. Their effects last for few seconds.
When I told you to not mess your ideas with spells with alchemy, i meant that it is not the same thing and that i want you to leave at least alchemy from the crazy ideas how magic should work, with no respect for everything else in the world. There is just a lot chemistry in it besides magic.
So why not instant effect? because nothing is happenig just like that. The game is the way it is now, because it was faster to code it this way. This way we have very simplified scetch of the things to come.
In fact there aren't many arguments we can give, when the magic is involved. I base my arguments on the general rule how everything is happening in real world. Because it is consistent and i heard PS world is going to be consistent too. I think you are basing your ideas on what is currently in game, while you can't be sure about it, as it is in very early and crude stage.

[zanzibar]

/equip 1 greater potion of healing
/equip 1 potion of healing
/equip 1 lesser potion of healing
/equip 1 lesser potion of healing
/equip 1 lesser potion of healing
/equip 1 fish
/equip 1 fish
/equip 1 fish
/equip 1 pie
/equip 1 pie
/equip 1 pie
/equip 1 apple
/equip 1 apple
/equip 1 apple


This is what my healing shortcut is.  I can do all these things at the touch of a button.  If I press it twice quickly, then I do it twice as much.

It is in no way realistic, but it's entirely permissible under the current game mechanics.

The devs realise this and they will be changing it in the future.

[bilbous]

12 ounces is about 355 ml.
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]

Potion \Po"tion\, n. [L. potio, from potare to drink: cf. F.
   potion. See Poison.]
   A draught; a dose; usually, a draught or dose of a liquid
   medicine. --Shak.

Potions are liquid by definition. The container could be wax or sheeps bladder or other edible thing to make a primitive gel cap but that is unlikely. It could be some kind of ceramic or glass or some kind of inedible container and this is much more likely. The amount of liquid is certainly debatable.  The disposition of the container is one of those things not really accounted for such as what happens to all the apple cores as I don't eat them and what are the fish wrapped in or how come pies don't get mushed in a fight. If you are looking for perfection you will always be disappointed.

I did distinguish between alchemy and magical items, it just always seemed to me that potions were magical in nature but that might be wrong. If they are not magical then I do not suppose you could go from one hit point away from death to full health in less than a week. It is the effect that seems magical more than anything else.

It takes no longer to drink out of a bottle than it takes to pour  out of it unless you are sucking on a nipple the way some of those power drinks come and these would not be in the game.
When I suggested five seconds to drink six ounces I was talking real time not game time.  If six hours of time in game takes one hour of real time then six seconds would take one second which is faster than you can swing a weapon as the weapon times appear to be in real seconds so that a 2 speed would take 12 seconds of game time.
Of course the timing in the game is not terribly consistant at the moment as some actions take longer than they should and others are shorter. Certainly some things must submit realism for playability and as we all know the game is far from finished.

/equip 1 greater potion of healing
/equip 1 potion of healing
/equip 1 lesser potion of healing
/equip 1 lesser potion of healing
/equip 1 lesser potion of healing
/equip 1 fish
/equip 1 fish
/equip 1 fish
/equip 1 pie
/equip 1 pie
/equip 1 pie
/equip 1 apple
/equip 1 apple
/equip 1 apple


This is what my healing shortcut is.  I can do all these things at the touch of a button.  If I press it twice quickly, then I do it twice as much.

It is in no way realistic, but it's entirely permissible under the current game mechanics.

The devs realise this and they will be changing it in the future.

Well, that is just the most ridiculous shortcut I have ever seen. It is perfectly possible and it is abusive.
Mine looks like this

Code: [Select]

/use 1 potion of greater healing and I press it as needed. It is perfectly reasonable and does not even always prevent my death. I see nothing wrong with this.

People who want to do ridiculous things will find ways to do ridiculous things and no amount of coding will prevent it.  If your problem was with the macro system why didn't you say so in the first place?


 

[zanzibar]

*le sigh*

1.  My problem isn't with the macro system.  You know this.

2.  Hit and run attacks are also abusive.

[bilbous]

If your problem is not with the macro system then what does your example healing macro have to do with your argument. It is an obvious misuse of the macro system. The fact that it has to do with things that give healing seems to be incidental. Make the macro system so that it cannot /use multiple items and the problem largely goes away. Add an activation hold on the /use of items and the problem is further reduced. Why should you be able to /equip a potion anyway, wouldn't that just put it in your hand? It should be /use.  Perhaps you should have to equip it before you can use it but you could still make a macro that unequips your weapon, [equips a potion uses it]*n and re-equips your weapon.  If you have a problem that there is potions at all in the game you are welcome to lobby to have them removed but I don't think you will succeed. In this thread I have presented several possible ways for them to be tweaked and I have yet to hear what your solution would be.

I have presented an alternative viewpoint about the "hit and run" attacks and you have not discussed them you just flat out said they were abusive. So what I can gather from this is that if you are so unfortunate ast trigger an ulbernaut attack by rounding a corner and coming face to face with it then your only recourse is to stand there and die because to run away from it is to abuse the game mechanic that characters can move faster than monsters.
I do not think anyone reasonable will agree with this but it seems to be implied by your position.

I will say one other thing about the original quotation I made from that other thread

If you must rely on potions and hit and run attacks, then it is my opinion that you are not strong enough to fight your target. 

and that is if you are fighting a monster that cannot do more damage to you than you can heal without magic and so cannot possibly kill you  then you are too strong to fight that monster. So what does that leave us to fight?

I must be dumb or something all I have understood about your objections is an unlikely use of 50 potions at once which was probably meant as a gross exaggeration, unspecified disposal of containers for which I offered possible methods of dealing with and pointed at other container problems, and the problem with full hands. This  I have tried to discuss various solutions for the future but I do not see using two or three potions in a fight as excessively abusive, technically I suppose it is. Are we supposed to just die because we lagged out and our attack packets didn't make it to the server but the mobs attacks didn't stop? Using my best weapons I can kill a gladiator in two to four hits because I have good skill and rarely miss, they miss me three times out of four most of the time but I still occasionally die due to lag issues. Does that mean I am not strong enough to fight gladiators?

I just don't know.

[zanzibar]

1.  My problem is with the game mechanics, not the macro system.

2.  I believe that I have infact discussed why I think the hit and run attacks are abusive, but I'll repeat myself for your benefit.  Hit and run attacks exploit the game mechanics.  They make duels unfun, they bipass the in-game ballances created by the devs, and they deny mobs the ability to fight back.

3.  There will always be creatures which are more powerful than you, and rightfully so.  We should not be able to take on ulbernaughts one on one and survive - they're HUGE.  Maybe if you're the target of a really intense enchantment, and you have a sword given to you by Laanx herself, then maybe it's appropriate.  But otherwise, people should only successfully fight the most powerful monsters in groups if we want things to be realistic as per the game mechanics.

[bilbous]

1. To me the macro system is part of the game mechanics so I don't really understand this point. It is one sub-system of the game mechanics that has some problems that I have no doubt will be fixed.

2. I don't duel because that becomes a test of reflexes and I just don't cut it with people half my age and less. That is my choice and I mention it just to show where I am coming from. When I fought the Ulbernauts before the world bug it would take me about twenty minutes with two slash 50 weapons and my success rate was only about 60%. I did it because it was a fun challenge unlike any of the other mobs available.  All it took for me to lose is to lag at an inopportune time and get hit with 4 claw attacks. The fact that the Ulbers were never quite where they seemed due to lag displacement added to the challenge. This is what I meant when I said way back when, I think it might have even been in the other thread, that the game mechanics sometimes abuse you. The Ulbersare the most powerful monster available but I doubt very much that they always will be. If they always will be the strongest monster I suspect they will become much tougher in the future. I rather expect they will become like the thugs, interesting of to a certain level of training but kind of pointless after a time.

3. An ulbernaut is more powerful than me and likely will remain so until a lot more training is available. It can kill me in four hits, I need about twenty to kill it (wild guess, probably low, might be close). A gladiator is not more powerful than me because I can kill it faster than it can kill me. I fundamentally disagree with you about grouping being required as some people just don't play well with others. Others are forced by circumstance to step up when there is nobody else. Maybe required grouping for the toughest mobs is one of the founding principles of Planshift but if it is I have not seen it expressed anywhere. Heros do heroic things and ond one of the tenets of the fantasy genre (where planeshift would seem to comfortably fit) is that people can be heroes.

I respect your viewpoint as expressed and hope you can respect mine even though we disagree. I would like to know if you think it is an abuse of the game mechanics to run away from a monster that you have triggered or if you feel no compunction in using your faster movement rate to avoid combat.

[zanzibar]

i.  The macro system isn't really a part of the mechanics of the game.  It's more of a trigger for what's already there.

ii.  When I first started playing, what was fun was to get a group of 15 or more people to go ulber hunting.  It was great because half of the group would die just on the journey there due to fall damage, and the rest died horrible bloody deaths at the hands of the monster.  When was the last time you saw a group of players that big work together to attack anything?

iii. The point is that your character is not a god and it shouldn't be a god.  There should always be things which aren't possible for your character; a creature shouldn't be killable just because it's in the game.