Posted by Nepenthe(IMM) on July 5, 2000 at 11:15:21:
In Reply to: To be fair...(not a flame, more a cry for help) posted by Imbrogno on July 5, 2000 at 09:19:30:
> ...and both you and Nepenthe are guilty of this, what is obviously apparent to you, as a coder, is not always as obviously apparent to me or any other non-coder. Not necessarily so, unless you mean to imply that software development is the last bastion of creative folks who have read Sun Tzu's The Art of War and similar works. . .and while I admit the thought fills me with the silly urge to round up my co-workers and an army and rule a third-world nation with an iron fist, I don't think that's the case. Read on. > You say there are simple ways to thwart the frightful fiend, the nightgaunt, clairvoyance(which I've never had a problem with), and so on, and I believe you, but a lot of times you coders use some pretty twisted logic when thinking up these "simple ways", or at least many people feel you do. The "simple" ways are simple because they don't require very much knowledge of how the power works. As a rule of thumb, let's say that if you've had the power in question used on you three times, have read the help file on it, and have asked a person with the power in question you trust not to be more than 20% wrong to explain it to you, something I call simple is not beyond your means. > This is why people come up with some silly "tactics" to use against things such as the nightgaunt. Hold a torch and wave it wildly they said. Obviously that's not going to work, but when twisted logic is used to code something, twisted logic is used to decipher it. Twisted logic doesn't come into play, or shouldn't. > Then to throw more water on the grease fire imms come here and swear up and down that they can't understand why people die to things like the frightful fiend. Nepenthe said once that he has never had a character die to frightful fiend(must be nice). This makes us normal folk think that there must be some elite secret, or the more paranoid and anti-imm among us think that it must be some sort of immortal conspiracy or imm cheating. I can tell you that I tried damn near everything with Imbrogno to beat the damn things short of seeing if they had an aversion to fart socials, and the only thing I found to be effective was standing at the healer spamming "heal heal" and hoping I could last long enough for When You Don't See Me to wear off. Nepenthe says there are other ways and I'll admit that I'm dumbfounded. All I can imagine is that there must be some items out there that do some crazy shit. Actually, I did once take a death to frightful fiend when I decided as a conjurer that damn it yes I could take that rager bard, and no I didn't need transform, servitors, or any spells up. (Look for an upcoming post on how ego screws you in PKs) Someone else in the thread commented on it and it's basically correct. Sure, I have a few countermeasures, and part of that is that there are maybe ten people who play CF who know the areas about as well I do (for example, I can name three or four different non-ridiculous ways to gain resist mental off the top of my head). Play the game for enough years and after a while all you have to do is keep pace with exploring the new areas. Still, the main reason I had little problems with frightful fiend is that I didn't let people use it on me -- something which is simple in concept but takes practice to perform in execution. > Sooner or later people get tired of it, like I have on occassion, and just start playing race/class combos that can easily defeat these things. I remember when frightful fiend came out I started playing races with more intelligence and stopped playing storm giants(my favorite race) because I was tired of every bard and his brother killing me with frightful fiend. Realistically though, people can't just always play elves(fiend-bane), and can't spend all 500 hours of their life underwater, and can't always just word when they see a person coming(damn entropy). You don't have to word when you see them coming, honest. > I guess the moral of the story is, don't assume that just because something is obvious to you, that it must also be obvious to anybody with an IQ over 85 or that because somebody can't not(ooh double negative, think a moment on it) die to something like frightful fiend or nightgaunt that they must be morons that can't play the game for shit. I wouldn't say they can't play the game for shit. You, in particular, are above the average -- but in my opinion you haven't made the jump to elite yet (ewww, I used the E word). Going to nightgaunts as another example: Let's say for the sake of argument that you know you can't beat a conjurer with a strong elemental, prep spells up, and a transplendant archon after being gaunted to him, and you can't get away. I'd take issue with both, but pretend. Why the hell are you giving him that much time? Kill the bastard every ten minutes. It's not polite, but it's simple and it would work. Maybe you just want to beat the nightgaunt. Okay. You say you can't be ready to fight one all the time? You don't have to be. Figure out when you do and be ready then. Be hidden then. Be somewhere out of its range (this is pretty well-documented by this point I think). How about just making sure you never get that wounded? There are ways to do that. How about getting a few friends and ganging the crap out of the gaunt when it shows up? That's pretty simple. Can you provide situations where some of these things don't work? Sure can. Are there more things like these you could think up? Sure are. Are there situations where none of them will work? Not many.