Gauging Interest: ALFA Fight Club

[Zelknolf]

So, I heard a couple peeps that have me wondering how interested people would be in an event like this, and I recall a Jayde/Mirabai event forever ago that was mysteriously popular, even though (or perhaps precisely because) it had no consequence to the broader IC status of ALFA-- so, the pitch is like this:

It would be an event of Roman-like excess, where players interested in beating some stuff up for totally-mindless fun would pummel critters for the amusement of themselves and spectators. Players participating as fighters would make new totally-OOC characters to fight for the purposes of demonstration, pile into a specialized fight club server that's not on the real vault or database, and engage in challenging and/or deadly battles while securely knowing that their death has no consequence to regular play. Depending on interest, we might organize it into brackets and let people compete on challenges (e.g. "Which party takes the least losses against this fight? / What's the lowest-level party that can win this fight?") -- we might also have some mock CvCs in there if there's interest. We'll lol mightily at the ALFA octogon.

Players would hopefully get to enjoy the simple twitchy-reflex and tactical thinking thing needed to do these fights, and would presumably get to see the violence-related things that we're working on in tech during these events before their release, as it's an easy thing for me to update a server with the under-development haks-- and we're likely to set challenges based on whatever we're working on (e.g. if we change the giant rock toss ability to be less broken, we'd probably set the next challenge to be a grand fight against giants), though I'd probably not warn in advance what the challenges would be (for reasons outlined below), but would put the server up in advance to let players build and equip themselves appropriate to level (... also for reasons outlined below).

I would be seeking to get a few things out of this-- namely, I work on AI, and need to see the AI fighting actual players to get an idea of how it's behaving and whether it's doing so well / doing so reasonably. The trouble there is that I don't have the fortitude to be a DM and the TA-- I tried; it didn't work-- so I have a fairly-short supply of genuine cases to see things working in high detail.

I would also be using the opportunity to observe preferred mechanics, more broadly, and might stage some quirky fights (like fights on swaying platforms over a shark pit) and then provide the area to the DM teams to use or modify as they like.

Builders of standard templates could/should use such an event to help norm CR (that is, if your CR 4 thing routinely plows through parties of level 4s, that's a sign that the CR is wrong), which will help the DM team provide appropriate rewards for combat and have the build be what they'd expect. This would be the part about aiming for 'target' wealth in these fights-- as it's a standard thing that we can point to and say "even though this exact wealth rarely happens, this is the official recommendation, and thus what we try to build and balance against." We would similarly not want people building for specific challenges, as real characters must build to survive an unpredictable world, and thus want people to build with only knowing what CR they'd fight-- or can die when caught off guard.




Time would have wiggle room; I'd probably place it where the most interested people can make the time, but if I'm caught totally off guard and everyone wants in, I might recruit someone to run a Euro or Aussie fight club too.

So, with all of that said, who would be interested in participating?

[Rumple C]

I get the feeling that for some reason you shouldnt be talking about this.

[Zelknolf]

You know this because Tyler knows this.

[Brokenbone]

Sounds fun. I can imagine participating with some kind of test PC(s). PC who displays no magical abilities, PC who all of a sudden displays a magical ability and draws attention of the "right kind" of foes who get interested in neutralizing, etc.

I want to learn how new AI can be used for critters, would you figure that "exhibition fights" might include visible information about what new behaviour type variables are in play?

In the 'Live Servers' I'd not expect words like TANK or SHOCK or NUKE to be floating over some monster's head in view of PCs, but if you had a pack of gnolls with like "GNOLL TANK, GNOLL FLANKER, GNOLL CONTROL" in this testing kind of environment, might be helpful for builders to know what happens if you make a critter with one of those "gamer words" associated with it.

[Zelknolf]

I want to learn how new AI can be used for critters, would you figure that "exhibition fights" might include visible information about what new behaviour type variables are in play?

Could, sure, if there are folk who really want to get into the sticky of how it works and why and such. We'd need to chat a bit about what new concepts like the AIType and AIParty mean, and how they influence actual behavior, to let someone know what to look for-- there's a lot of nuance to the calculations of "what sort of state am I in, what do I want to do, and what should I do?" that goes through monsters' very-tiny fictional brains.

And of course the ACR is still open source-- with ACR_Creaturebehavior being full of plain-English comments-- you don't need to be able to read code to understand "// Do we even have anyone to fight?" and "// We're mindless, and thus too stupid to do anything special. Hit the nearest bad guy."

[Heero]

Ill fight any deer you place before me.

[Adanu]

I'd actually go for this.

[Brokenbone]

I had been looking at this: https://github.com/ALandFarAway/ALFA-Ba ... 983b1a20c6

And then thinking, "great, so somehow somewhere builders can set a critter as a nuke or buff or flank or whatever, but how?"

I'd kind of like to see it in action, see some mean orc tanks with some shaman in the back doing buffs or a few archers plinking away and trying to stay out of melee. Stuff like that.

[Zelknolf]

I had been looking at this: https://github.com/ALandFarAway/ALFA-Ba ... 983b1a20c6

And then thinking, "great, so somehow somewhere builders can set a critter as a nuke or buff or flank or whatever, but how?"

I've taken this one to the DM forums. See yonder for that walkthrough.

I'd kind of like to see it in action, see some mean orc tanks with some shaman in the back doing buffs or a few archers plinking away and trying to stay out of melee. Stuff like that.

And you shall! It looks like there's enough interest to do this at least sometimes.

[Castano]

Do it, BUT STOP TALKING ABOUT IT. (see rule #3).

[t-ice]

I'll totally be there if I happen to have the time. Which is unlikely
Amn server might also serve as the host, being the only active beta at the moment? If you want, just tell me what to do.

[Curmudgeon]

*raises hand*

Don't know how good a tester I'd be, but am definitely interested in observing behaviors.

[kid]

Well... whatever.

Set a date, a time, a server or whatever it is you need doing.

I dont mind oficiating or whatever.

No real want to make a toon and beat people up.

[puny]

depending on time etc i could be up for some spankage... and curiously watching mobAI stuffs

[Zelknolf]

So, definitely folk enough to organize.

Next step is figuring out availability-- I'd try to do this on a day/time that has the best turnout. So when can everyone do this, expecting a 1-2 hour thing on the first go (plus however long it takes you to roll a purely-mechanical character, for those who would be fighting-- but that won't necessarily be at the same time. I'll likely put the server up and point everyone at it with instructions to the effect of "Make a level [x] character and equip it from this merchant.")?