New combat display

[Sneaky]

So, first thing I'd like to have put in, is a symbol at the beginning that shows hey this is your attack, and then other symbols for a Pc attack, and an NPC attack. maybe have it show up as
You attack an infested carrier with your broad curve-bladed steel kukri knife and broad curve-bladed steel kukri knife!
#knife (+*****) Dodged!
You are unable to find an opening for your off-hand strike.
#knife (+*****) Dodged!
#knife (+*****) 26 slash damage (left leg)
An infested carrier attacks you with his closed fist!
%closed fist (-------) Dodged!
Malone attacks an infested carrier with his unarmed strikes!
@fist (+*****) 5 bludgeon damage (chest)
@kick (+*****) 10 bludgeon damage (left hand)
@fist (+*****) 9 bludgeon damage (chest)
@elbow (+*****) 11 bludgeon damage (chest)
@fist (+*****) 6 bludgeon damage (chest)
@elbow (+*****) 10 bludgeon damage (chest)
I mainly want this because in my soundpack I have the different attack sounds panned left and right, so your attack sounds play the hit and dodge sounds on the right and their hits and dodge sounds play on the left so you know who's getting hit, the Pc thing is new because I was having a hard time determining how to specify a Pc, but if this gets put in I can make them the center channel. The way it is now there's no easy way to determine who's attack is who's. The bar is also a hard thing to understand. Myself as a screen reader user, I have punctuation turned off so those symbols don't show up for me unless I go in and actually look at them, which is good, I like it, but it needs a key legend I think to really understand how it works. It may seem intuitive for someone who can see, but it's just a little difficult to reason out. Other than that I like it, it's pretty funny because the way the text is now is the way my pack pretty much displayed the information.

[Sneaky]

oh, and maybe a symbol to show that an attack is directed at you too, so using the symbols from the example above,
#+% at the beginning shows you attacking an NPC
@+% Shows another player attacking an NPC
%+# shows an NPC attacking you
%+@ shows an NPC attacking another player.
Hope this makes sense.

[merin]

yes, please!

[Stranger]

Maybe because I'm an old timer I have a different view of this. I like the summarization but I am not a fan of obfuscation. I like to see as many numbers as I can so I can mentally label what is challenging and what is not. For example in the old system I can remember that beasts in canyon are a five to six hundred challenge and may offer some challenge for me. It also helps me easily keep track of these numbers when I play with my alts so I can remember what is challenging for them.

The new system makes that much more difficult as I have to look at my skills, do a little math and guesstimate what is going on. I realize this is an RP enforced MUD but when I look back on the roots of all RPGs one can see dice rolls are clearly shown to players to give them a clear idea of what is going on.

Perhaps it is just not my style but may I suggest a toggle to allow players to choose between the different combat displays?

[Araus]

While I fell in love with the new combat outputs after I figured out how they worked, I'm going to have to agree that the ability to switch back to the old outputs would be nice- For people used to the old system, those who want to crunch the numbers themselves and I can see people with sight issues liking it more.

[Acarin]

I'm not a fan of the new system. I tried fighting some critters of a known strength and found it very misleading. Can we please have an option to toggle our numbers back? If the intent was simplicity, I'd prefer to calculate myself.

This is really a big deal as far as combat is concerned. Just for clarity: I'm heavily against this change. While I appreciate all the hard work the GMs have put in to this, I can't see myself continuing to play CLOK without hard numbers.

[Makkah]

I'm in agreement. While I only really tested it against very easy opponents, it was a bit odd. I am a numbers person, however, so there is some bias.

[Kiyaani]

I'm enjoying it the more I use it. It's a fun display, but I'm too used to numbers as well. I'd likely continue to use this new method just for general play since I like the interfacing and it's a lot less cluttered.

That said, having the option to toggle back would be amazing, especially when trying to get familiar with new opponents and to help judge how much work you need to put in to close gaps.

The symbols do that to an extent, but it's not precise enough. While the percentages might stay the same for 500v1000 and 100v200, the hard skill numbers needed to catch up vary drastically and it's good to know if you need to grind up 10 points or 50 to impact combat balance instead of just mindlessly grinding until you see the + or - change with no idea how much your efforts are contributing.

[qinweiqi]

What I like: I enjoy the simplicity of the new interface. I think it offers great potential to provide more meaningful combat information to players who use screen readers.

What I don't like: I'm less thrilled with the amount of information lost. Also, a lesser complaint is the dark grey # sign is difficult with at least one color scheme I use.

What I would suggest:

• I do like the idea of adding an option to toggle for numerical display vs. graphical display.
• I would really like to see a legend describing what the full range of symbols are and what they mean. I don't know how to differentiate between + and ++ except that ++ means more probable than +. I suspect this would be particularly meaningful for players that use screen readers, as they would be able to create substitutions for the symbol sets that are more friendly for their screen readers and more meaningful for them.
• I would like to see the symbol set expanded to indicate what methods of defense are being used. I was very thrown off by having my D [xx] B [xx] replaced with (#) first because I wasn't sure if I was still using my shield (I sometimes need to put it away) and second because I was left to assume that it is showing me the composite defense ratio as opposed to an incorrect single defense ratio. I believe it is correct, but mostly I'm left to guess whether the defense symbol sets are taking all of my defenses into consideration or just one.

[Rias]

Now that you've all been my unwilling test subects a bit (mwa ha ha haaa!) and given some feedback (thank you for those who did), you can enable the CombatRolls option (type OPTION COMBATROLLS) to show the numerical goodness. It's still more condense than it was before.

I'll do further tweaking and look at requests more this weekend. Thanks again for those who provided feedback, and please continue to do so!

[merin]

Another thing maybe?

Could we have it so that if someone attacks you it would instead of 15 crush damage to the head it would say 15 crush damage to your head?