Suggestion: Training Dummies

Opening this thread for thoughts/opinions for or against this suggestion.

Basically the idea would be a special area/zone in towns where there are target-able 'dummies" to which players can test gear sets for damage, try out macros, spells, etc.
They take damage/debuffs, won't die, and won't attack back, and there would several of them, which indicate mob levels (e.g. 20, 50, 90, etc).
And yes, this idea is taken straight out of WoW if you were curious. ;)

Thanks!

A good idea, but we'd have to prevent skillups from occurring when attacking the dummies. Furthermore, it would get complicated when you get into the enemies' weaknesses; how would you test damage for a monster weak to piercing, or blunt, or whatever on just a basic monster? Sometimes, in the game, you have to see whether the gain from a certain weapon is worth the expense of reduced damage based on its type. The same goes with magic, to a lesser extent.

I think it would work if the devs could address this. I do like the idea of a 'test zone'.

Good points. To keep things simple, I imagine the training dummies not have any specific weaknesses (or damage reduction) to weapon damage types or spells -- they would have a generalized set of defense and elemental resistance to spells.

Also, any spells/abilities/added effects which would induce death would probably not affect the training dummy, as they cannot die. Furthermore, since they cannot attack back, a player may not be able to test fully the effects of certain enfeebling effects such as slow, paralyze, silence, etc., but at the very least can test whether the player can effectively land said spells/abilities.

They technically already have them in Fortalices up in Zvahl [S]. Yeah, they do die after a while, but it's not as if it's hard to move between them. Worst part about getting there really is just the stairs outside the castle with the amphitere derping around(especially if you're sneaking in to cap skill on a freshly 37->49'd subjob).

Your idea isn't bad at first glance (btw. WoW copied the idea from other games - just to name one "Guildwars") but with the limit of 6 lines there isn't much to test what you can't test on any random mob outside of any city. :(

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Originally Posted by Ihnako

Your idea isn't bad at first glance (btw. WoW copied the idea from other games - just to name one "Guildwars") but with the limit of 6 lines there isn't much to test what you can't test on any random mob outside of any city. :(

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Thanks for your input!
I only mentioned WoW because that was the only game I have played which had the feature. I wouldn't be surprised if it copied the concept from other games, I just haven't played them yet :)

Testing on mobs is fine, in fact it's been done up till today to test lots of things, however there are a couple of drawbacks going this route:

1) Level variability - Since we cannot see the actual level of the mob with /check (with the exception of 'Even Match'), what you fight on one mob may not be the same, thus test data can be skewed slightly.

2) Mob family - Every mob differ from each other when you cross family, thus you would have to fight the same mob of the same family to keep data consistent.

3) They fight back - This may not be an issue with mobs several levels lower than you, however for Tough and above, your thoughts shift more towards survival, depending on the job with which you are testing. Furthermore, getting any enfeeble effects on you which may change your stats and thus would skew data as well.

4) They die - This is not desirable when you would like to effectively capture certain things such as DPS, whether a multi-hit weapon activated, or the amount of damage you dealt with a multi-hit WS, since that data could be lost on the final blow. Furthermore, on death you would have to look for another mob with the same attributes (per point #1 and #2)

Having these testable dummies would remove these variables thus creating a good 'control', which I feel would be helpful for those players who want to simply gauge relative damage on different gear, as well as those players who want to get more fine-grained and flesh out formulas. It makes testing things much more convenient.

The 6-line (isn't it 8-line max?) limit could be resolved by applying the right filters, depending on what you want to test, but yeah I agree that the limited line this is a hurdle. Also, it is probably safe to mention that a number of players make this a non-issue by using parsers. ;)

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Originally Posted by Kihrre

Having these testable dummies would remove these variables thus creating a good 'control', which I feel would be helpful for those players who want to simply gauge relative damage on different gear, as well as those players who want to get more fine-grained and flesh out formulas. It makes testing things much more convenient.

The 6-line (isn't it 8-line max?) limit could be resolved by applying the right filters, depending on what you want to test, but yeah I agree that the limited line this is a hurdle. Also, it is probably safe to mention that a number of players make this a non-issue by using parsers. ;)

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The drawback or better the point why they probably wouldn't implement it is that SE doesn't want to give you a deep insight of how the game works exactly.

{True Strike} :)

You dont say what the purpose is for this "test" data. If its all standard and little resemblance to the actual mobs you want to fight its of little value. When you have tested your gear and come up with expected results, dont be surprised if those results arent matched when you actually fight real mobs.

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Originally Posted by katz

You dont say what the purpose is for this "test" data. If its all standard and little resemblance to the actual mobs you want to fight its of little value. When you have tested your gear and come up with expected results, dont be surprised if those results arent matched when you actually fight real mobs.

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I agree in that this feature is not meant to simulate fights with actual mobs/NMs out in the world -- That was not my intent for this feature, and I did not expect this feature to be used that way.
I did, however, say in the discussion that it would be be helpful for those players who want to test different gear sets to find out if one set can do more damage than others, to name an example. There can be several other uses for it, such as testing battle macros, verifying formulas, etc.
It's up to the player to decide what use he/she can get out of them, but having a 'control' will make testing things out without the variability so that a player would have confidence of the results. Then, knowing these results, they can compare them against real mobs.

Thanks for the reply!