Armageddon General Discussion Board

I miss rangers, and think it is really sucky not to give Stalkers, master archery. Any support?

Old ranger is smack-dab in between Scout and Stalker.

Which you choose depends on what you want to focus on more: exploration & utility, or killing stuff.

Yeah you may be right, but I think a ranger is actually better than both. Very little gained, much lost.

So far as I know, the reason is the same as miscreant not getting master backstab. Staff wanted to dilute the ability to literally dissappear combined with the ability to stab a guy.

It is just a step away from end all be all.

Archery is sort of like backstab.  You  have stealth/poisoning/archery.

Before, rangers were the end all be all of that combination.  Now, you have a choice.  Do I slay at archery (and melee, if someone closes), at the cost of not being as good at stealth and lacking poisoning?  Or do I rely more on stealth/poisoning for the kill with archery merely being the delivery method, rather than how I necessarily do the most damage?  Or do I split the middle?

It is not often that I agree with Brokkr on these things, but on this point I do.

Neither class is as good as ranger...true enough...So, unlike with ranger where you have one class and can decide style you get to pick one of two classes with the style chosen for them. Less flexible, less powerful.

PvP vs PvE, generally.

You want to rain arrows onto hoards of gith or take out the anakore in the distance? Go for archery.
You want to maximize your chances to kill one single thing/person? Go stealth.

I miss warriors with branched weapons. I miss elkrosians. I miss full magickers. Game doesn't have them, so go with the 'next best thing'.

Running an very near max stalker, atm... and from a balance point of view, I would not give stalker additional tools, or make the current tools more powerful.

I've found it to be quite well balanced, though extremely slow to train compared to their miscreant counterpart. Happy with it, overall.

All good comments. Thank you. Losing my last ever ranger has me in a spin.  I'll find the right role/class combo again, just want to state again, I miss rangers.

This thread makes me want to try a scout.

I usually pick a merchant-style class, but I usually end up using what little outdoor utility I have and wear that out pretty thin. You know, in the kind of roles I plan to keep, not the wild thiefy ones with attitude to spare.

Ya'll keep making me one to play outdoor characters.


Stop.

When looking over the classes when they arrived, I honestly didn't have much of a problem with the ranger split.

The only reason I was in a hubbub over miscreant was because the nature of the criminal skill tree meant they were preferable in every situation over the infiltrator, which I still stand by now.

Both stalker and scout looked good to me, I think Ranger was just -too- good at -everything- the moment you were outside the gates.

Don't forget weapon skill caps got raised, too. So an advanced cap on weapons is probably close to what used to be master.

So.....

The reason weapon skills got raised.

Warrior's four basic weapon skills had a lower cap than their advanced weapon skills.  But with the changes Nergal made to incorporate offense/defense into how weapon skills raise, it was extremely unlikely folks were ever going to get to an advanced weapon skill cap.

In the new classes the old "basic" weapon skills for heavy combat got bumped to a max that equated to the max the old "advanced" weapons had (that no one ever got to), thus folks not loosing out on potential.  This, incidentally, made light combat be equivalent in their capped weapon skills to old warrior.  And played a part in the reasoning to not include advanced weapons currently in the skill listings.

Sweet.

So that means light combat advanced is 'beat an old warriors ass' level.

Heh, I will take on your light combat maxed PC with my last warrior and put real money on the outcome. ;)

Still, good to know the reasoning behind raising the weapon skill caps. And totally true, I bet that nobody ever maxed an advanced weapon skill.

I once branched one at 6 days played, and worked that skill for the next 50 days played, I think I got it just inside JM.

QuoteBut with the changes Nergal made to incorporate offense/defense into how weapon skills raise

About that. Sorry, this isn't really about stalkers and archery, but since you brought it up and the topic has already drifted there...

This change feels really bad in practice, Brokkr. I think it should be changed so that it compares your weapon skill to the target's defense, not your offense. As it stands, you can totally get stuck if you let your offense get too high, moreso than in the past where you could at least use "tricks" to generate misses. We all understand the reason behind the change, but the result is a situation where raising offense is the last thing you want, and switching to a different weapon skill halfway through a character's life is basically out of the question.

Let's say Amos has trained his sword-arm in the Byn for two years. Suddenly he finds a steel-tipped spear in the sewers and holy crap, time to learn spears! But he can't, because in the process of training swords for two years, his offense got so high that almost nothing qualifies for weapon gains anymore. He's pretty much stuck at the starting level for spears unless somebody in the clan happens to raise their defense even higher than where his offense plateaued. In that unlikely event, he'd be able to learn a little bit of spears before his offense caught up again.

In the past, while it would still be harder for Amos to train spears due to his offense making it harder to miss, there were still ways. He might spar sitting (in responsible moderation!), or a particularly agile elf might join the clan. He could experiment with blindfighting on those rare occasions where the opportunity presents itself. He'd get the occasional unlucky miss from low-rolling even against middling opponents. There was hope for Amos and his spear if he was patient and creative.

Now it seems that you pick one weapon skill from the start and that's the one you're stuck with forever. Letting your offense go up without that weapon skill going up in tandem is a really bad thing because that offense gain eats into future gains in the chosen weapon skill. Amos might even feel tempted to have gate duty every time there's unarmed training, lest he let his offense go up without a corresponding gain in his favored weapon skill. It's a tough choice. Do you do what's right, at significant cost to your character's coded faculties, all because of a weird mechanic that honestly doesn't even feel like it represents realism? Or do you do the dodgy thing because it helps you accomplish your goals?

It has just created a really weird dynamic where offense skill is your enemy. There's now this mad rush to raise weapon skills as high as possible before offense gets too high to qualify for gains against the things you normally fight. It's very easy to raise offense--just get misses, any kind of misses. But now, not every miss is desirable. I've even caught myself wondering if there are ways to hinder offense gains, like fighting drunk, so I don't get stuck on journeyman weapons for the third consecutive character. Naturally, I slapped myself across the face and said a few Hail Marys when I saw the error of my ways.

It's a very counter-intuitive bit of code, because when you think about it, having high offense (i.e. general combat experience) should make it easier to learn a new weapon skill, not harder. The way it currently works does not feel realistic at all, it's a very gamey mechanic that exists purely for the OOC purpose of stopping people from mastering weapons in gortok dens. That part is fair enough, but in the process of stopping that, it also stops a lot of legitimate training methods and warranted character advancement.

There's always been a bit of a problem with weapon skills. Even before this change, you stopped getting misses against almost anything long before it felt fair to plateau. You can barely hit journeyman doing reasonable things like hunting. People used to use stilt lizards or bags of rocks to help things along, but these questionable methods have been steadily patched out of the game. Now we're at the point where the one and only way to raise a weapon skill beyond the doldrums of mediocrity is to spar regularly with someone who has quite high defense, and there's frankly only two clans in the game where this is a realistic expectation. And even there, it often won't actually be available. I venture that there are seasons where the number of characters with over 50 defense who are available for training on a regular basis is dangerously close to 0.

From my experience, once you've hit journeyman, there's basically nothing in the game that will dodge your attacks except for long-lived fighters, who have an understandable tendency to stop sparring regularly, and things like silt-horrors that you can't just go out and fight. Even some of the supposedly dangerous things like dujat worms and rantarri will stop dodging you long before you can begin to hope to see <advanced> show up on your skill sheet. And while one could argue that if things stop dodging your attacks, maybe you don't need to get any better, the fact remains that anyone with master parry and shield use - which is trivial to get for the classes that can - will parry and block over 75% of your attacks if you've got low journeyman in your weapon skill, so you don't exactly feel like you're as good as you have any reason to get.

In the end, this system comes to feel nothing like reality. It doesn't make much sense that the vast majority of career soldiers and mercenaries top out at mediocrity. It seems like the entire second half of the combat skill progression scale is tucked away behind a door with a sign that reads "only truly exceptional and uniquely gifted heroes allowed." In reality, anyone with years of combat training should be near the peak of human prowess, and the truly gifted would be a little better than that. In the game, it's more like you never get better than okay unless by pure dumb luck there's a high-defense fighter in your clan who spars regularly during the hours where you play, and for most characters, that's just not something that they get to have. Instead they learn a good deal for the first year of their career and then pretty much stop learning altogether once they're alright at fighting.

In short, it feels like the system is designed such that the "point of exceptionalism" is situated at mid-journeyman rather than the threshold to mastery. Why are two out of five skill levels gated behind prohibitive code and unrealistic obstacles? We all know that this part of the code in no way matches up to realism, and generally feels like shit to work with. It always did, and now it's worse than before.

Thanks for the theorycrafting.

You may have noted that only one class even branches anything from weapon skills, and that was intentionally designed to be really hard.

So after that, you have to ask yourself, "If I am actually hitting everything with my weapon skill where it is, what does it really matter where it is?"

If you are just playing to see (master) I have no sympathy.  In order for a Lan or a Rand to exist, most folks can't get to the top end of skill.  So yes, it is designed so that most folks don't get to the top end of skill.  That would not be desirable from a staff perspective, as players are on the same scale as our NPCs.  It gets really, really hard to even create a challenge for truly great combatants without doing stuff that players might not consider fair.

I'm disappointed that you resort to these copy-paste arguments when I went so far out of my way to pre-emptively address them, knowing that they would be the default responses if I didn't. And for all my trouble, that's still all you offered, complete with a rude dose of "thanks for the theorycrafting" snark. All the same, let me try to clarify, and excuse me if I employ the same tone that you afforded me:

QuoteYou may have noted that only one class even branches anything from weapon skills, and that was intentionally designed to be really hard.

It's not all about branching, but if we're going to delve into that topic, I feel compelled to point out how silly it is for enforcers to branch a class-defining skill in a manner that's intentionally designed to be borderline impossible. Doubly so when you can bypass this obstacle by simply taking a subclass that grants the skill from the start. This would not have passed the most cursory test in any other line of gaming.

This class begins with a higher offense than any other starting option ever before, making it even harder to raise weapon skills. Enforcers start out barely able to get a miss off of anything that's safe to fight alone, i.e. scrabs, raptors and just about any humanoid NPC. By your own admission in previous threads, enforcers need to get a ways into advanced in order to branch those skills. Yet it's difficult to hit journeyman at all, let alone bypass it.

This class isn't worth playing without backstab/sap. It's raw garbage if you don't have them. If you thought master backstab/sap on a heavy combat class was so problematic, you shouldn't have set it up that way in the first place. That's just bad game design. We're down to such a small number of clans offering real combat training these days, and they're largely incompatible with the kinds of roles that the enforcer class lends itself to.

QuoteSo after that, you have to ask yourself, "If I am actually hitting everything with my weapon skill where it is, what does it really matter where it is?"

Here it bears mentioning that combat does not consist of just two outcomes called "hit" and "miss." When fighting anything but animals, parry and block comes into play. That's the main problem that I tried to bring up, but you didn't seem to notice. If you're stuck at low journeyman weapon skill because nothing will dodge you anymore after you reach it, anything with high parry and/or block will effortlessly avoid most of your attacks. Because, you know, you've got like 30% slashing or whatever is the point where missing becomes nearly impossible, and they've got maxed parry and shield use. It's a fundamentally broken system.

We're looking at a game where the equivalent of lions and rhinos become sitting ducks against you at level where you're nowhere near overcoming a month's worth of parry training. You stop missing so early in your skill progression that you're not even halfway to mastery when you reach the point where all sparring becomes a pointless series of blocks and parries. Progression stops long before you can even begin to talk about achieving anything skill-wise. Are we to accept that low journeyman is the reasonable limit for the vast majority of Zalanthans, and that anything past this is exceptionalism?

Again, I went very far out of my way to emphasize that we're not talking strictly about <master> here, we're talking about a point so low that it feels like one has made next to no progress from where one began. Yet you see fit to ignore this say that you have no sympathy if one just plays to see <master>. That's the actual textbook definition of a strawman argument.

We're working with a combat skill system designed to stall you before the halfway point. Further progress comes down entirely to whether or not there happens to be a long-lived fighter willing to spar and available during your playtimes. In a game that struggles to reach 50 players at peak hours, that does not feel reasonable. It ends up being so random and arbitrary that one character can stall out at low journeyman and another can approach master based on nothing more than the total happenstance of someone with high enough defense matching your playtimes.

There are not enough alternatives to that. You can spend ten in-game years fighting gith and mantis and tarantulas and end up at the same skill level as someone who spends half an in-game year training half-assedly in a clan where there happens to be one dude who's been around long enough to work up a solid defense skill. This puts such a huge limitation on the variety of worthwhile character concepts.

Before this change to the offense/defense dynamic, players used questionable methods to overcome these design flaws; but instead of addressing the flaws, those methods were simply patched out. Now we're left with a game where in order to make any impression combat-wise, you must have time served in one of the few remaining sparring clans. This means that any character concept for which this is not suitable is forever limited to combat mediocrity.

Yes, certainly, you should not be able to hit MASTER SUPREME BEING by fighting scrabs. Nobody ever said that should be possible. But the fact of the matter is that right now, there is absolutely no way to become better than okay in any way except for a long-term training regimen with one of the woefully few characters that actually have high defense and availability for sparring. You can do things that should be considered among the most dangerous things in the world, like tackling gith warbands and hunting bahamets, and it won't get you anywhere because of the way the code works. They just will not dodge your attacks once you've got decent weapon skill and offense. Not high. Decent. Mediocre. The level that a month of sparring gets you to. And that's not reasonable.

Greve is correct. This topic has been beaten half to death about one-hundred other times. Ultimately, the origin of all this pain is that the mechanism for skill increase in Armageddon -- namely that it is tied to failure -- is horrifically ill-conceived and is probably one of the greatest warts that the game has. This tends to conflate with the subtle but incredibly offhanded manner in which achievement based players are dismissed by various off-the cuff (or as stated in the previous post, copy-paste) arguments. Achievers comprise 25% of Bartle's Taxonomy yet anyone seriously focusing on achievement in Armageddon is not only going to be seriously let down by the anemic system in place, they're going to be openly criticized by staff for being an achiever at all.

Quote from: ResponseToAnUnrelatedRequestAboutItemBugs
You seem very, very, very fixated on codedly "improving" your PC.  Ultimately, the game isn't really about that - and we don't have any aspirations of making it so.

Why bother fixing a broken system when you can just blame the people pointing the cracks out to you?  :-*

Why are combat skills so heavily designed to be stupid difficult to get to master?

Stealth skills are easily obtainable at master (...usually). Crafting skills are easily master-able.

Why combat? Why does every other skill in the game have no problem mastering but with combat there seems to be this desire to keep a weird bellcurve.

guys this is get so heated.

I want to highlight a good point Greve made: an offense plateau should not prevent you from skilling up a second weapon skill at least up to the level of your first weapon skill.

I want to contest Greve's assessment of enforcer: even without backstab, you've got an easy-to-train warrior with sneak + hide + climb (plus your subguild, of course). This is objectively not a bad skillset even if you never branch backstab.

Quote from: Jihelu on March 13, 2019, 02:59:46 PMa weird bellcurve.

It's even worse than that, as it's not a bell curve, but a decaying asymptote more tightly described as logarithmic. This isn't bad per se, as many games have skill caps based on logarithms. The issue is that the limit of this particular logarithm is defined not by the potential maximum of skills, but is actually far far below that threshold. This is because your ability to grow is defined by how well opponents dodge, which is decoupled from the maximum of the skill. Hence, the asymptote decays far underneath the ceiling and mastery becomes unrealistic and unenjoyable.

Crafting and other skills don't suffer as grievously from this as they're not locked to your opponent's dodges.

I recognize that when Armageddon was founded game design was still in its infancy in a myriad of ways, which explains this holdover. But the stubborn refusal to fix what is a very simple problem continues to boggle me.

Six months later, still no good customer-facing skills.

Quote
If you are just playing to see (master) I have no sympathy.  In order for a Lan or a Rand to exist, most folks can't get to the top end of skill.  So yes, it is designed so that most folks don't get to the top end of skill.  That would not be desirable from a staff perspective, as players are on the same scale as our NPCs.  It gets really, really hard to even create a challenge for truly great combatants without doing stuff that players might not consider fair.

In theory, I would agree. If everyone can have 90/100 Slashing skill, then what is the point of having the 5-89 other than to be "less than"?

In reality, though, some people DO want to see that they are a master, because unfortunately the way the combat code is designed, they're still going to get wtfpwned by a random gith even if they're better than their PC cohort.

And if your official reasoning for "We don't like high skill" is because "Its hard to create a good challenge", then to use your own words... I have no sympathy. If you can't figure it out, find someone who can.

Hmm. I think branching off weapons skills is an interesting challenge. I'm not certain where it branches off...I'm guessing near advanced/max like most skills.

I agree with Bryetta...I think Enforcer is one of the more fun classes, even if you never branch sap/backstab. It's a versatile skill set that's not as amazing utility wise as some other ones, but I think it suits certain concepts very well.

Do I wish Sap/Backstab branched in the middle of the skills, and was more accessible? Sure. But if it's that important, like it was pointed out, you can get a sub guild to have it out of the gates.

I sort of agree with Brokkr too about 'combat difficulty'. It's honestly difficult to hit the sweet spot of 'how many NPCs to face vs how many PCs there are', particularly if any half-giants are present. If there are 4-8 combat-proficient PCs...A ridiculous amount of NPCs have to be thrown at you in order to constitute a danger or threat. Not to mention if one of the PCs is very combat proficient, disarming weapons that fly out of the room, bashing with 80% accuracy, and so on.

I don't mind the challenge, personally. But that's just me. I can also see how it's frustrating, based on skills only raising when there are fails. I do appreciate the marked improvement of 'if facing a much more skilled opponent/spar buddy, you get more skill'. I've noticed it and it's a big improvement.

Wasn't there some staff update saying they had the code that could branch things at more than just, a few points under a skill max?

Meaning you could theoretically branch a skill at something other than high advanced?

Yeah and I think that is the case with some other skills I've noticed branching in Jman. I think it depends what your cap is and where they have it 'go on' to branch.

Just not sure where that is for Enforcers with their weapon skills, but I don't particularly care either.

Yes, theorycrafting.  Not necessarily a bad thing.  But your goals in putting forth your arguments seem to be that you want to change the distribution of how powerful combat-wise characters get.  How much so, I am not sure. Thus the perception of things as broken.  What if the goal is to maintain the current distribution of skill levels, roughly?

Also theorycrafting because, hey, I ran multiple characters when we were play testing the new classes and afterwards to make sure things weren't completely borked on the ground.  Like a miscreant.  And stalker.  And scout.  And Pilferer. 

And for heavy combat characters, a fighter to test the new skills.  And because I was worried, because of Nergal's changes, whether what I was doing with the heavy classes would make it so someone couldn't even reach caps. And the results of that? I got to insanely high off/def levels.  I maxed two weapon skills getting to insane high off/def levels.  I maxed another weapon skill after I already had the insane high level of off/def. And then I promptly stored the character having tested what I wanted, because it was boring AF. Normally I wouldn't talk about it, but it seems folks have this idea that it isn't possible.  It is definately possible, it just isn't likely.

It is just slightly easier for Enforcers to get backstab and sap than it was for warriors to branch an advanced weapon skill.

I would like to see the logs of how you got misses at that level, Brokkr.

RE: TOPIC,  Stalker is already a STRONK class, and archery isnt that hard to gain in.

Quote from: Inks on March 13, 2019, 05:31:21 PM
I would like to see the logs of how you got misses at that level, Brokkr.

Laying on the ground fighting turaals like the rest of us, probably. Edit: Or ep attacking another staffer who is etwo, mounted, and defended. That's actually broken. Or blindfighting. There's a static miss chance in total darkness so no matter how good you are, you'll get some misses even fighting a noob. The one thing all these techniques have in common is that they require you to sacrifice all pretense of staying IC. People who are campaigning for a change in this system are the CHAMPIONS of IC behavior, because most of us know how to get around this problem, we just find it distasteful that RP has to die in order to accomplish it.

The argument isn't that it's impossible, it's that it:
A) Forces people to unrealistic extremes like laying on the ground fighting turaal or ep attack/etwo defend sparring for 10-15 minute spars while the rest of your clan yawns in the background
B) Isn't fun

And then when you point these out and attempt to start a conversation about how this unfullfilling and unpleasant aspect of Armageddon might be alleviated, you get called a filthy twink and berated for caring about it in the first place.

I made you graphs, Brokkr. GRAPHS.

(https://i.imgur.com/DOUC8Ot.jpg)

Quote from: Brokkr on March 13, 2019, 04:45:22 PM
It is just slightly easier for Enforcers to get backstab and sap than it was for warriors to branch an advanced weapon skill.

Personally, that's all I need to know. Is it easy? No. Is it possible? Yes. And I don't think it's game breaking to not have backstab/sap on an Enforcer, by any means. It's cool, but you can just as easily murder someone from hide with 'kill dude' and most times I would actually prefer to do that than leave it to chance with sap/backstab.

Look, I don't think staff would go out to deliberately use stupid code tricks if they were trying to playtest the viability of a class.

I sympathize with wanting to get stronk because I love coded skills as much as anyone, but that's just paranoid.

Quote from: Namino on March 13, 2019, 05:37:16 PM

Quote from: Inks on March 13, 2019, 05:31:21 PM
I would like to see the logs of how you got misses at that level, Brokkr.

Laying on the ground fighting turaals like the rest of us, probably. Edit: Or ep attacking another staffer who is etwo, mounted, and defended. That's actually broken. Or blindfighting. There's a static miss chance in total darkness so no matter how good you are, you'll get some misses even fighting a noob. The one thing all these techniques have in common is that they require you to sacrifice all pretense of staying IC. People who are campaigning for a change in this system are the CHAMPIONS of IC behavior, because most of us know how to get around this problem, we just find it distasteful that RP has to die in order to accomplish it.

The argument isn't that it's impossible, it's that it:
A) Forces people to unrealistic extremes like laying on the ground fighting turaal or ep attack/etwo defend sparring for 10-15 minute spars while the rest of your clan yawns in the background
B) Isn't fun

And then when you point these out and attempt to start a conversation about how this unfullfilling and unpleasant aspect of Armageddon might be alleviated, you get called a filthy twink and berated for caring about it in the first place.

I made you graphs, Brokkr. GRAPHS.

(https://i.imgur.com/DOUC8Ot.jpg)

Did you seriously just answer a question posed to someone else for someone else and then used your own answer to base your own response to your own answer?

Quote from: Dar on March 13, 2019, 05:55:54 PM

Quote from: Namino on March 13, 2019, 05:37:16 PM

Quote from: Inks on March 13, 2019, 05:31:21 PM
I would like to see the logs of how you got misses at that level, Brokkr.

Laying on the ground fighting turaals like the rest of us, probably. Edit: Or ep attacking another staffer who is etwo, mounted, and defended. That's actually broken. Or blindfighting. There's a static miss chance in total darkness so no matter how good you are, you'll get some misses even fighting a noob. The one thing all these techniques have in common is that they require you to sacrifice all pretense of staying IC. People who are campaigning for a change in this system are the CHAMPIONS of IC behavior, because most of us know how to get around this problem, we just find it distasteful that RP has to die in order to accomplish it.

The argument isn't that it's impossible, it's that it:
A) Forces people to unrealistic extremes like laying on the ground fighting turaal or ep attack/etwo defend sparring for 10-15 minute spars while the rest of your clan yawns in the background
B) Isn't fun

And then when you point these out and attempt to start a conversation about how this unfullfilling and unpleasant aspect of Armageddon might be alleviated, you get called a filthy twink and berated for caring about it in the first place.

I made you graphs, Brokkr. GRAPHS.

(https://i.imgur.com/DOUC8Ot.jpg)

Did you seriously just answer a question posed to someone else for someone else and then used your own answer to base your own response to your own answer?

Gosh, you're right. Guess I'll just sit here patiently and wait for the log dump of the playtesting that is definitely, absolutely going to be posted in response to Inks' request, because transparency of this sort is the mantra by which this game has flourished.

The point never was that we felt this was impossible. Most of the people in this thread KNOW how to get combat skills to master. Brokkr's assertion that 'he managed to do it therefore it's not a bad system' is laughable. Because I've done it multiple times myself and stand by the assertion that the system is cancerous.

Hide skill levels.  Problem solved. :)

No turaals were harmed.

However.  It was not easy.  The character almost died multiple times, even when they were extremely skilled.

Quote from: Namino on March 13, 2019, 06:04:05 PM
The point never was that we felt this was impossible. Most of the people in this thread KNOW how to get combat skills to master. Brokkr's assertion that 'he managed to do it therefore it's not a bad system' is laughable. Because I've done it multiple times myself and stand by the assertion that the system is cancerous.

And therein lies one of the key problems with discussing this topic.

You haven't.

Nearly no one* has.  By design.

*Meaning players here, not characters

Meditate with methelinoc in the mountains then go duel a pack of kiyet lions if you want master combat skills.

Brokkr, I doubt he means he has maxed on the new chars.

If I was to state I have maxed a weapon skill more then once it would be true....and even then one had to resort to stupid things.

But I have not on the new classes of course....but from what you have said, one needs to do even dumber things now. Which is the actual argument. One needs to do things that are not truly IC or stupid which amounts to the same thing. Likely to get staff on your ass if noticed. Of course you could do these things being high ranking staff, I doubt anybody would ask you if it was IC for your playtesting PC to be doing what they were doing. Or to doc karma for it. Which I know has happened simply because somebody was going unarmed verses stilt. Also, if it required that you take your PC against 4 mantis at a time, nobody is going to load 20 more mantis on you because it would be realistic in that spot according to them.

I don't have a horse in this race myself, I don't really care, if I decide my PC needs to have a maxed weapon skill, I will do what needs to be done and when...and I mean WHEN staff complains about it I will simply point back at threads like this where high ranking staff says it is not broken, we made it this way on purpose.

Quote from: X-D on March 13, 2019, 08:01:21 PM
Brokkr, I doubt he means he has maxed on the new chars.

If I was to state I have maxed a weapon skill more then once it would be true....and even then one had to resort to stupid things.

But I have not on the new classes of course....but from what you have said, one needs to do even dumber things now. Which is the actual argument. One needs to do things that are not truly IC or stupid which amounts to the same thing. Likely to get staff on your ass if noticed. Of course you could do these things being high ranking staff, I doubt anybody would ask you if it was IC for your playtesting PC to be doing what they were doing. Or to doc karma for it. Which I know has happened simply because somebody was going unarmed verses stilt. Also, if it required that you take your PC against 4 mantis at a time, nobody is going to load 20 more mantis on you because it would be realistic in that spot according to them.

I don't have a horse in this race myself, I don't really care, if I decide my PC needs to have a maxed weapon skill, I will do what needs to be done and when...and I mean WHEN staff complains about it I will simply point back at threads like this where high ranking staff says it is not broken, we made it this way on purpose.

Yeah, basically I am fine with things the way they are, however, I would like to know that players won't get dunked on for the same zany stuff that Brokkr would have had to do to master 3 weapon skills.

Also..skilling weapons up the way you have to isn't fun or realistic. And when I see PCs telling PCs to go do twinky stuff IG MUH IMMERSHUNS.

Therein lies the rub I think, X-D, on deciding to go out and master a weapon skill.  How to design a system where a player can't be OOC like "I want -this- character to get max weapon skill!" and then be able to go out and do it.  But at the same time making it possible that some character of theirs might be able to attain max weapon skill.

IC'ly crazy maybe, but I find the assumption that I had to do either the same OOC wonky methods or something zany amusing.

I appreciate that you acknowledge that. Cheers. (Anything icly crazy over and over again is ooc unless your PC is insane in order to get skillgain ic)

Actually Brokkr, I really have no idea, I understand the problem, I have no idea currently how to fix it...like I said, I don't have a horse in this race because of it. I agree that a PC who has managed to max a weapon skill should be special and rare. But I do not have an issue with somebody thinking I want -this- Pc to max a weapon skill and being able to do it. No worse then saying I want THIS pc to join the byn or I want This pc to live 2 IC years and 50 days played.

(BTW, ICly crazy is equal to ooc wonky or zany methods in my book)

The only other way I see to "fix" the problem is make getting skill gains mildly easy but make the gains themselves stupidly tiny, so that it takes MANY days of play to get maxed, but that just means a truly boring grind...I am not advocating such a method.

We'll have to disagree.  Perception of risk can vary widely character to character.  What is crazy for a human to do can be much less crazy for a HG or mul for instance.

If you try and say that you maxed 3 skills on a HG without doing REALLY stupid shit I am going to call bullshit.

And even moreso on a Mul...just because it is easier to justify ICly with a HG or a mul does not stop it from being stupid zany off the wall methods.

In fact it is even worse.

straight up meta.

Also not available to many players.

I believe XD means crazy as in unrealistic (dragging turaals into pitch black caves), not crazy as in actually dangerous to your character's life. The most dangerous animals on Zalanthas are shit dodgers so paradoxically provide little value for skill gain.

Unless Brokkr's arguing it's okay for a Mul to deliberately get blinded by acid and then spar for a few hours whilst blind because muls aren't held to the same standards of believability because of their race.

Anyway, there's a few easy ways to solve this issue if we've reached the point of the conversation where we've admitted it exists.

I mean both Namino. I have played enough dwarves just for the "justify with focus" Or HG "justify because stupid" It does not make it right, it is meta gaming. Oh, I need to fight 4 tarantulas at a time so I can get the outnumber negs...Hey, my PC is stupid/focused/enraged so it is all good.

Have you guys never watched a martial arts movie where they went traveling the world to master their kung-fu against perilous foes simply for the sake of it?

Are you trying to say Kung-fu movies are realistic?

I suppose you think prof wrestling is real?

And even if we're going by the kung-fu movie analogy, the rub here is that seeking out the most perilous foes you can won't result in mastering your kung-fu in Armageddon. Wimp-lo staying at the dojo chasing the chickens (who happen to be rather dodgy) will result in a much higher mastery even though you've been kicking cyclops ass on your 10 year journey.

Now, if I was to play, say a celf, and get REALLY high wis and agi and end, and twink some, go against the celf docs some, I could max more then one weapon skill in a few RL months....

You know, join the Byn...sneak out every chance I get to go after stuff...make sure when sparring to always be outnumbered at 3-1 or better...

Well, there was that guy in college that went to study Filipino stick fighting with some master that would break people's arms if they came to him unprepared, but that is a different story.

I'm pretty sure I've said it before, but you won't probably get to the upper echelons of fighting prowess unless you put your character at risk. Some would say this is crazy.

As has always been the case....does not stop it from being stupid :) Trick is to do it without staff calling you on it being stupid.

Quote from: Brokkr on March 13, 2019, 09:42:46 PM
Well, there was that guy in college that went to study Filipino stick fighting with some master that would break people's arms if they came to him unprepared, but that is a different story.

I'm pretty sure I've said it before, but you won't probably get to the upper echelons of fighting prowess unless you put your character at risk. Some would say this is crazy.

I branched tridents on two characters in a row (I'm not counting my elf that fell into a one room climb exit with a dujat) fighting nothing but turaals while laying on my back. I wouldn't consider this risky, save if a staffer decides to animate an entire delf tribe to prevent you from fighting turaals (cough cough). Mastering combat skills in Armageddon requires patience, and a willingness to dispense with strict IC behavior. It does not require risk.

It could require risk, if we're willing to acknowledge this problem and take steps to remediate it.

Quote from: X-D on March 13, 2019, 09:29:15 PM
Are you trying to say Kung-fu movies are realistic?

I suppose you think prof wrestling is real?

The desire to improve oneself is real.

Quote from: Brokkr on March 13, 2019, 10:02:27 PM
Pre- or post- Nergal change to learning?  Anything before that change is pretty irrelevant.

Tawil branched tridents in December 2017/January of 2018. Solan branched tridents in... August of the same year? These skills brought to you by the Turaal Training Co, LLC.

Long after Nergal was gone.

Moreover, hunting Mekillot or Bahamet would not have worked, either. They don't dodge. Dodging is strictly tied to ones ability to skill up, and the most risky, dangerous game in Zalanthas are bad at dodging, which is an unfortunate fact. A brief brainstorming session as to how to make truly dangerous game on Zalanthas commensurately valuable for learning, while decreasing the value of speedy yet harmless blighters would be of great value for the health of the game.

I did bring this up previously in a less public forum, as an aside. I still have the graphs. THE GRAPHS.

(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/YRf0q7ZNRQOUw6JgFPAb6kBaNmXEHlpLh4lmyqHZviG62gPU7oeB6bwFIlztI8Jut75weFrsw7prJM84LDdSajptRrweetPHztQyJ8woS6CBF5FeZfC-AWFbzlP0of2NNZq_HNkalAuvXMzZ5A)

Here's the problem as I described it then. You can see that the correlation coefficient (R²) between the perceived or real risk of enemies and their actual propensity to teach a character anything (ie, dodge their attacks) is widely out of proportion. Bringing those more into line solves all your problems. Note that I don't have access to the NPCs actual stats here so I'm going by my perceived risk, but this figure is largely just supposed to illustrate the larger issue here.

Quote from: X-D on March 13, 2019, 08:37:03 PM
The only other way I see to "fix" the problem is make getting skill gains mildly easy but make the gains themselves stupidly tiny, so that it takes MANY days of play to get maxed, but that just means a truly boring grind...I am not advocating such a method.

See this is how I always thought it was done where you would slowly gain your combat skills as you fight. For at least 15 years I just tried to get many days played as, on the few times I asked for some help from staff, I was just told to keep doing what my character does ICly and eventually weapon skills would improve and combat skills would branch.  I followed the T'zai Byn training schedule (or whatever clan I was in) or I kept hunting scrabs and raptors and giths with my hunter or tribal type rangers and I never got a weapon skill above journeyman. To put my ability to skill up in focus on all my rangers in 20 years I've only ever branched parry twice and neither was under 45 days played.

It's really only recently when the GDB has loosened up and there have been some threads like this that I've learnt things like just because you miss someone in combat doesn't mean it counts as a fail; you have to go out of your way to fight specific types of npcs if you want to get the type of failure in combat that will count as a failure to bump up a weapon skill; or you need to spar with someone who has gone out of their way to fight the specific npcs that will produce the correct type of failure. If you're in a role/clan that doesn't go out fighting these types of npcs or you don't have anyone to spar against who has gone out and fought these types of npcs to raise their skills then you're completely out of luck and you're back to 45 days played to get to Journeyman in the weapon skill that was bumped because of your starting location.

Or am I still wrong and there is something else I'm missing about training characters who have a role where combat is a part of their daily life?

-Fake Edit: I've been playing for so long that telling me won't ruin some sort of 'sense of achievement' for figuring it out on your own and I won't miss the pat on the back I give myself. Help me understand or not I will probably still play as I always have I just might actually know what I'm doing.

Bushranger,

- you need dodges, not parries (I know it was supposedly updated but the chance is so minimal it may as well not exist if it was)
- your opponent needs to be as good or better than you at the weapon skill for the best chance of a skill raise
- alternatively, your NPC opponent needs to have high enough defense that it can dodge you, and you need to be able to fight it long enough to get at least a handful of dodges, without being murderized, which is difficult at the higher echelons.

So you need to fight other PCs, with a good defense, on a very regular basis, i.e. be in the same clan and have the same playtimes.

You need to train intelligently instead of trying to pound on each other (i.e. switch off with each other, one of you playing defense, the other offense, take breaks if one of you is getting too tired i.e. codedly hurt). This is one of the best and most realistic IC ways of training, but if you don't have anyone you can currently train with you will have to train someone else until they're good enough.

The problem is you need other PCs which you can train with (difficult for off-peakers), or you need to take big risks in extremely dangerous areas.

Yes I can see that and it's the sort of things my characters would do when they were training in a clan like the T'zai Byn. None of that matches with the "Have to do dangerous and ICly crazy things." that Brokkr says for mastering a weapon skill nor the "Have to fight with specific Turaal npcs while on your back with a blindfold on when the wind is blowing southerly and the silt is low." sort of crazy situations that players like X-D or Namino talk about for mastering a weapon skill. So is all of that hyperbolic or is that actually what players who want to train their weapon skills do?

Suuure. I'll do it, Bushranger.

Regrettably I don't timestamp these things very well. My last character (old warrior) went from novice to apprentice in a weaponskill in 23 hours played. He went from apprentice in that skill to journeyman in an additional 106 hours (4 days 10 hours). I don't know when he hit advanced and branched trident, but I think he died with something like 24 days under his belt and I don't think it was many days before that. I was roleplaying and interacting with my clan during all those times, but it was a relatively iso-role so I had a lot of boring solo time to kill in this manner. YMMV.

I am not a staff member. I don't know how, precisely, these things work. I don't have evidence and cannot verify by examining the code. However, I have had pretty good success at achieving reasonable levels of skill gain on my characters. Here's how I believe things to work.

Missing your target rolls a chance to tick a skill gain.
A parry is not a miss.
A block is not a miss.
An armor bounce is not a miss.

So and so swiftly dodges your stabbity-stab.

That is the only line you are looking for. You can increment your weapon skills and offense in this fashion against any foe in the game, NPC or PC, as long as you get that line.

I can't say for certain what the roll is. DIKUMUD is strongly dice based in the traditional sense (one of the reasons it tends to be pretty... coarse as a codebase), but I'd imagine that the staff have modified this extensively during their years of augmentation. My gut says it feels like a d10. That means, on average, you need to miss 10 times (not parried, not blocked, not bounce, swiftly dodges x 10) before you tick your skill. This begins your timer countdown. When this expires, you are free to increment your skill again. I strongly suspect that this timer is not static, and increments to longer and longer durations as the skill increases, or alternatively requires more and more triggers before you acquire an incremental increase in the numerical skill. As I am not a staffer, all of this is largely just observational data, but it meshes well with the experience if nothing else. 90 minutes, again, feels about right until your timer expires. It worked for me anyway.

Your ideal pathway to success is to find people or things that dodge you and maximize the odds of those dodges happening, get ~15 misses (in case you're rolling badly on the hypothetical d10 on that day), then go home, drink an ale, wait 90 minutes, and go do it again. Against wildlife that means turaals, or other things that dodge you. Nothing dangerous. Dangerous things, even Rantarri, do not dodge very well and there's no point in risking your hide for no gain. Stick with canyon rats, fail a bash against them, then ep your weapon and hope. Nice thing about turaals is they tend to team, too, so if you can get them to pile onto you, you're a beaut. It will get very grindy as you end up at late-advanced having to chew through four or five turaals to get your ten misses, but nobody said this was easy (or even fun!).

Against people, that means ep attack, etwo defend, defender mounted if you want to get very saucy. If you see the two biggest badasses in the clan fighting in this fashion... well, now you know how they got 1337 in the first place.

Follow this simple guide and you too will feel hollow and empty inside.

See, the issue with statements like this:

Quote from:  BrokkrThe prevailing reason is that we do not want folks to focus overly much on min/max of their stats.

Which is the same reason I am not going to give you the information as regards to age.

Is that obscuring how your game works doesn't prevent people from 'gitten' gud'. It just means that the people who lab shit get a massively unfair advantage and repeatedly catapult themselves to high echelons of skill levels while people like Bushranger who diligently play the game are shut out because they're not labbing shit (because they've been told they shouldn't be concerned with getting good anyway, in many cases).

If the balance of the game rests on people not understanding how shit works, then you need to go back to the whiteboard and hash out a system that can survive actually being understood by your players.

Quote from: Namino on March 13, 2019, 05:37:16 PM

Quote from: Inks on March 13, 2019, 05:31:21 PM
I would like to see the logs of how you got misses at that level, Brokkr.

Laying on the ground fighting turaals like the rest of us, probably. Edit: Or ep attacking another staffer who is etwo, mounted, and defended. That's actually broken. Or blindfighting. There's a static miss chance in total darkness so no matter how good you are, you'll get some misses even fighting a noob. The one thing all these techniques have in common is that they require you to sacrifice all pretense of staying IC. People who are campaigning for a change in this system are the CHAMPIONS of IC behavior, because most of us know how to get around this problem, we just find it distasteful that RP has to die in order to accomplish it.

The argument isn't that it's impossible, it's that it:
A) Forces people to unrealistic extremes like laying on the ground fighting turaal or ep attack/etwo defend sparring for 10-15 minute spars while the rest of your clan yawns in the background
B) Isn't fun

And then when you point these out and attempt to start a conversation about how this unfullfilling and unpleasant aspect of Armageddon might be alleviated, you get called a filthy twink and berated for caring about it in the first place.

I made you graphs, Brokkr. GRAPHS.

(https://i.imgur.com/DOUC8Ot.jpg)

As someone who played their elf around Namino's at the time, I can say that he resorted to things I had been chastising his character as my character for what I now realize to be necessary in the current state of the game. He was playing in such a way that made sense for a combat-focused character to be a true threat, training to be a warrior worth their salt. It's saddening that IC believability has to be sacrificed to "git gud" or at the very least be marginally useful. I feel stupid for ever getting on him ICly, so for that I apologize Namino.

The thing is, Strongheart, you were right to criticize. That shit is worthy of criticism, what I just described in the bigger post up there. It's not in character. What in character reason do you have for 'coincidentally' falling off of your mount into a pile of dodgy foes? There's none.

The issue is, we're faced with this stupid choice between never achieving your character's true potential, or violating what makes IC sense for you character. That is the nature of how skill increasing works in this game and it's dumb.

Is it really unreasonable or outlandish to ask that we find some sort of solution here where our characters can both stay in character as well as become badasses? Is it truly impossible for advanced achievement in regards to skills and roleplay to coexist in this game?

I made a chart of an estimate of skill progression over time:
(https://i.imgur.com/0Rm506a.png)

Here's some statements that I think we all can agree upon:

In this game, we're limited by a few things:
a) skill prowess does not depreciate over time
b) for weapon skills, we know very basically that it increases quicker at lower levels and increases slower at higher levels.

As players, we want to have a sense of progression of our characters strengths and skills.

As game designers, there should be some sense of risk and danger with the combat mechanics for characters, and I think there is a general sense to maintain risk at even the highest levels of combat. 
In that, I believe the game is designed to have some very dangerous mobs that shouldn't be able to be killed by a single character, unless that character is extraordinary.


The definition of extraordinary and the time spent to reach that level is where I think people disagree

Hell yeah, we're doing graphs. I have one of those of my own but yours is so much prettier, dude.

The issue is less about the amount of time investiture in my opinion, but your graph does a gorgeous job indicating what I think is the real problem.

The orange series for the current system will NEVER intercept skill level of 100. The blue one will.

That is the key difference. The gap between the limit of the orange line (somewhere around 60 probably?) and 100 is the 'zone of unfullfillment' that causes so much irritation.

Quote from: Bushranger on March 13, 2019, 11:21:01 PM
is all of that hyperbolic or is that actually what players who want to train their weapon skills do?

it's mostly hyperbolic but is an actual problem in that it's almost impossible to train without another reliable PC partner or extensive gameworld familiarity. If you are an ISO character by circumstance (renegade, offpeak, empty clan) your options are far more limited - you have to train against NPCs.

I will say however you don't need to, and shouldn't do, stupid stuff like lay down on the ground and fight turaal. That's blatantly abusive.

Quote from: Namino on March 14, 2019, 12:20:45 AM
The orange series for the current system will NEVER intercept skill level of 100. The blue one will.

That is the key difference. The gap between the limit of the orange line (somewhere around 60 probably?) and 100 is the 'zone of unfullfillment' that causes so much irritation.

I don't think it's necessary for skills to be "100" or MAX.

For me, the question becomes - what is required of me to have near top weapon skills?
Is it:
a) branching a new skill?
b) killing a certain mob?
c) killing a certain PC?
d) showing "master" in the skill list?
e) other?

If the intent is to branch a new skill, I'd probably want to branch it after day 20 (500 hours) if I worked at it, or day 30 (720 hours) if I didn't work at it.

If it's for killing a certain mob, that really depends on the mob.

If it's for killing a certain PC?   I'd probably want to do it with multiple people rather than a lone gunman.

If it's for showing "master" in the skill list, I'd probably set expectations correctly for specific skills, and say you should see MASTER at 2000 hours played.  Remember - your skills will never degrade.

Quote from: mansa on March 14, 2019, 12:31:32 AM

Quote from: Namino on March 14, 2019, 12:20:45 AM
The orange series for the current system will NEVER intercept skill level of 100. The blue one will.

That is the key difference. The gap between the limit of the orange line (somewhere around 60 probably?) and 100 is the 'zone of unfullfillment' that causes so much irritation.

I don't think it's necessary for skills to be "100" or MAX.

Many people who play games do want to see that 100 though. An entire quarter of the Bartle's Taxonomy is dedicated to them. I think dismissing people who want to see the outer limit shouldn't be something we encourage. Same people who collect all the stars in Mario, beat all the optional bosses, get all the legendary quality gear in MMOs. Even if it's not required for anything but a sense of achievement, there's a whole quarter of players who still want it, just because they can. There's no point in setting the maximum to be something that is not actually achievable. Mind you, these people don't generally achieve these limits because they want to poop all over people who are weaker than them. It's more akin to climbing a mountain -- it's because it's there. People who want to cover that gap between 100 and the limit of the orange line are rather stigmatized in the current system.

Quote from: Namino on March 14, 2019, 12:36:49 AM
Many people who play games do want to see that 100 though. An entire quarter of the Bartle's Taxonomy is dedicated to them. I think dismissing people who want to see the outer limit shouldn't be something we encourage. Same people who collect all the stars in Mario, beat all the optional bosses, get all the legendary quality gear in MMOs. Even if it's not required for anything but a sense of achievement, there's a whole quarter of players who still want it, just because they can. There's no point in setting the maximum to be something that is not actually achievable. Mind you, these people don't generally achieve these limits because they want to poop all over people who are weaker than them. It's more akin to climbing a mountain -- it's because it's there. People who want to cover that gap between 100 and the limit of the orange line are rather stigmatized in the current system.

It's like the achiever sort has been systematically shut down. Why amass coins, it's not like you can buy property or titles or NPC minions with it, or even put it into Nenyuk now past a certain point. Why go out into the wastelands, you only hear tales of every area having it's own set of hostile guardians, not of great treasures found and returned. Why play a sorcerer or mage, they've been fragmented and centers of population largely rogue-mage-proofed. Now why aim to become a great fighter, it's a quixotic goal.

Might there be a certain class of players (socializers?) who just want semi-potent, interchangeable, undistiguished minions that stay in their places, instead of the genies of powerful characters that kept popping out of bottles to disturb their supremacy?

First they came for the Explorers, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not an Explorer.

Quote from: Eyeball on March 14, 2019, 12:52:51 AM

Quote from: Namino on March 14, 2019, 12:36:49 AM
Many people who play games do want to see that 100 though. An entire quarter of the Bartle's Taxonomy is dedicated to them. I think dismissing people who want to see the outer limit shouldn't be something we encourage. Same people who collect all the stars in Mario, beat all the optional bosses, get all the legendary quality gear in MMOs. Even if it's not required for anything but a sense of achievement, there's a whole quarter of players who still want it, just because they can. There's no point in setting the maximum to be something that is not actually achievable. Mind you, these people don't generally achieve these limits because they want to poop all over people who are weaker than them. It's more akin to climbing a mountain -- it's because it's there. People who want to cover that gap between 100 and the limit of the orange line are rather stigmatized in the current system.

It's like the achiever sort has been systematically shut down. Why amass coins, it's not like you can buy property or titles or NPC minions with it. Why go out into the wastelands, you only hear tales of every area having it's own set of hostile guardians, not of great treasures found and returned. Why play a sorcerer or mage, they've been fragmented. Now why aim to become a great fighter, it's a quixotic goal.

Might there be a certain class of players (socializers?) who just want semi-potent, interchangeable minions that stay in their places, instead of the genies of powerful characters that kept popping out of bottles to disturb their supremacy?

Eyeball, what is your definition of a great fighter?

Namino, by maximum do you mean the display of the text master in your skill list?

Quote from: mansa on March 14, 2019, 12:57:29 AM

Quote from: Eyeball on March 14, 2019, 12:52:51 AM

Quote from: Namino on March 14, 2019, 12:36:49 AM
Many people who play games do want to see that 100 though. An entire quarter of the Bartle's Taxonomy is dedicated to them. I think dismissing people who want to see the outer limit shouldn't be something we encourage. Same people who collect all the stars in Mario, beat all the optional bosses, get all the legendary quality gear in MMOs. Even if it's not required for anything but a sense of achievement, there's a whole quarter of players who still want it, just because they can. There's no point in setting the maximum to be something that is not actually achievable. Mind you, these people don't generally achieve these limits because they want to poop all over people who are weaker than them. It's more akin to climbing a mountain -- it's because it's there. People who want to cover that gap between 100 and the limit of the orange line are rather stigmatized in the current system.

It's like the achiever sort has been systematically shut down. Why amass coins, it's not like you can buy property or titles or NPC minions with it. Why go out into the wastelands, you only hear tales of every area having it's own set of hostile guardians, not of great treasures found and returned. Why play a sorcerer or mage, they've been fragmented. Now why aim to become a great fighter, it's a quixotic goal.

Might there be a certain class of players (socializers?) who just want semi-potent, interchangeable minions that stay in their places, instead of the genies of powerful characters that kept popping out of bottles to disturb their supremacy?

Eyeball, what is your definition of a great fighter?

Namino, by maximum do you mean the display of the text master in your skill list?

(edited out IC info, please don't do that. -- delirium)

He proceeded to beat the living shit out of everything the arena masters threw at him. Including eight muls simultaneously, and a gaj. Finally the staff stepped in and just shot him dead with staff arrows.

That was a great fighter. Will we ever see his like again? I don't see how.

Quote from: mansa on March 14, 2019, 12:57:29 AM

Quote from: Eyeball on March 14, 2019, 12:52:51 AM

Quote from: Namino on March 14, 2019, 12:36:49 AM
Many people who play games do want to see that 100 though. An entire quarter of the Bartle's Taxonomy is dedicated to them. I think dismissing people who want to see the outer limit shouldn't be something we encourage. Same people who collect all the stars in Mario, beat all the optional bosses, get all the legendary quality gear in MMOs. Even if it's not required for anything but a sense of achievement, there's a whole quarter of players who still want it, just because they can. There's no point in setting the maximum to be something that is not actually achievable. Mind you, these people don't generally achieve these limits because they want to poop all over people who are weaker than them. It's more akin to climbing a mountain -- it's because it's there. People who want to cover that gap between 100 and the limit of the orange line are rather stigmatized in the current system.

It's like the achiever sort has been systematically shut down. Why amass coins, it's not like you can buy property or titles or NPC minions with it. Why go out into the wastelands, you only hear tales of every area having it's own set of hostile guardians, not of great treasures found and returned. Why play a sorcerer or mage, they've been fragmented. Now why aim to become a great fighter, it's a quixotic goal.

Might there be a certain class of players (socializers?) who just want semi-potent, interchangeable minions that stay in their places, instead of the genies of powerful characters that kept popping out of bottles to disturb their supremacy?

Eyeball, what is your definition of a great fighter?

Namino, by maximum do you mean the display of the text master in your skill list?

For argument's sake, let's say yes, we'll consider that the maximum. From the perception standpoint of the players, there is no distinguishable continuation from that point that we can observe because master is the highest tier we can hit on the skill-list.

I would argue the primary disconnect for me is that in order to maintain a growth curve that stands a reasonable chance of intercepting master level for a combat skill, one has to participate in contrived activities that are neither realistic nor fun. It's not necessarily the slope of the curve, you see, it's the foundation on which the curve is built. There is no impetus to pursue real challenge in the world. Real challenge has been decoupled from the mechanism of skill gain.

Quote from: Namino on March 14, 2019, 01:02:27 AM

Quote from: mansa on March 14, 2019, 12:57:29 AM
..Namino, by maximum do you mean the display of the text master in your skill list?

For argument's sake, let's say yes, we'll consider that the maximum. From the perception standpoint of the players, there is no distinguishable continuation from that point that we can observe because master is the highest tier we can hit on the skill-list.

I would argue the primary disconnect for me is that in order to maintain a growth curve that stands a reasonable chance of intercepting master level for a combat skill, one has to participate in contrived activities that are neither realistic nor fun. It's not necessarily the slope of the curve, you see, it's the foundation on which the curve is built. There is no impetus to pursue real challenge in the world. Real challenge has been decoupled from the mechanism of skill gain.

Ahh.  I see.

I have a potential solution for weapon skills.

Lower "master" to current lower rung advanced levels, shuffle advanced between journeyman and the new "master" level, and introduce a new level called "supreme master" in the old "master" tier.



Here's another chart of the 5e D&D Challenge Ratings and XP:
(https://i.imgur.com/Dfht28x.png)

Let's transpose that to the current discussion and how I believe it's designed:
Novice is challenge rating 1 - 6
Apprentice is challenge rating 7 - 12
Journeyman is challenge rating 13 - 18
Advanced is challenge rating 19 - 24
Master is challenge rating 25 - 30

If we want to change this, how to we also make sure people can still have risk and adventure during the top challenges?

Quote from: mansa on March 14, 2019, 01:32:11 AM

Quote from: Namino on March 14, 2019, 01:02:27 AM

Quote from: mansa on March 14, 2019, 12:57:29 AM
..Namino, by maximum do you mean the display of the text master in your skill list?

For argument's sake, let's say yes, we'll consider that the maximum. From the perception standpoint of the players, there is no distinguishable continuation from that point that we can observe because master is the highest tier we can hit on the skill-list.

I would argue the primary disconnect for me is that in order to maintain a growth curve that stands a reasonable chance of intercepting master level for a combat skill, one has to participate in contrived activities that are neither realistic nor fun. It's not necessarily the slope of the curve, you see, it's the foundation on which the curve is built. There is no impetus to pursue real challenge in the world. Real challenge has been decoupled from the mechanism of skill gain.

Ahh.  I see.

I have a potential solution for weapon skills.

Lower "master" to current lower rung advanced levels, shuffle advanced between journeyman and the new "master" level, and introduce a new level called "supreme master" in the old "master" tier.



Here's another chart of the 5e D&D Challenge Ratings and XP:
(https://i.imgur.com/Dfht28x.png)

Let's transpose that to the current discussion and how I believe it's designed:
Novice is challenge rating 1 - 6
Apprentice is challenge rating 7 - 12
Journeyman is challenge rating 13 - 18
Advanced is challenge rating 19 - 24
Master is challenge rating 25 - 30

If we want to change this, how to we also make sure people can still have risk and adventure during the top challenges?

In a document I sent to the staff many moons ago, I advocated something that made more dangerous animals more worthwhile for skill increases. While your proposal is probably more optimal, I was, at the time, attempting to avoid major reworkings as to the foundations of the skill system.

QuoteThe solution to this problem (in light of caveats) can be visualized on figure 3 as any process that brings the outlier points closer to the midline. This is accomplished by more tightly correlating the risk of a particular mobile to the reward. In the case of turaals and verrin hawk, this can be accomplished by either altering their established biology to make them more dangerous (right shifting them until they intercept the line) or making them less agile, reducing their reward (down-shifting them until they reach the line). This will solve the issue of highly experienced hunters mindlessly grinding on turaals when they should, in reality, not find that experience challenging or educational.

For animals occupying the area below the line, they should have their potential adequately tweaked so characters learn more from the experience of hunting them. Given our reliance on dodges to represent the potential for skill increases, this leads to some difficulty. The best solution would be to alter the skill process so that natural armor (ie 'bounces') count towards a character's failure. This would instantly incentivize people to hunt massive megafaunal creatures with thick hides and high danger. This may not be the easy fix I am envisioning. Alternative solutions would be to decrease megafauna's reliance on natural armor and increase their agility if the current skill-increase system cannot be altered, which will lead to a new IC/OOC disconnect (as to why this building sized animal is so fast and difficult to hit). Potentially the easiest solution would be to add additional content to the game of highly agile, but highly lethal wildlife to populate the currently empty upper right portion of the line, and would offer both challenge and improvement for players at that period of growth.

I'm sorry, I'm really f'n sorry. I was grieving my last ranger ever, and struggling with the stalker scout split for how to achieve what I wanted for a new, similar concept to a ranger again. Many responses have helped and engaged my understanding and inspiration. Thank you. Where are we now with this?                                                                               

The can of worms has already been opened.  ;D

Oh. On topic Stalker and Scout are both pretty good. Scout is most like old school ranger.

Ranger branched throw at master archery, it is easier now. So not sure what OP was going on about tbh.

Try branching disarm from kick or sap from bludgeon like other classes.

From my experiences with the new classes that I have played as at this point, outdoor classes seem to have better all-around utility outdoors, and the ones meant for either stealth or city play have better city utility, with the sort of skills that go with living in the city. For example, the wilderness ones seemed to be better out of chargen at mining, than the city and general classes that also start at novice forage (as forage levels control mining ability.)


I could be imagining it, but I think this is intentional.

I would think Scout and Stalker would either be near-equal with noncombat utility skills out of chargen, or equal. I'm guessing Scout has a bit of a boost, but its probably a small one.

If you're on the fence about new classes and are going to try a character with an unskilled job or something like that, or someone who's being paid to sit around and talk, I'd go for something that is directly related anyway to your job, like a city-based or wilderness-based. I think that's still going to matter.

QuoteAnd for heavy combat characters, a fighter to test the new skills.  And because I was worried, because of Nergal's changes, whether what I was doing with the heavy classes would make it so someone couldn't even reach caps. And the results of that? I got to insanely high off/def levels.  I maxed two weapon skills getting to insane high off/def levels.  I maxed another weapon skill after I already had the insane high level of off/def. And then I promptly stored the character having tested what I wanted, because it was boring AF. Normally I wouldn't talk about it, but it seems folks have this idea that it isn't possible.  It is definately possible, it just isn't likely.

I'm very skeptical that you did this using methods that are readily available to players. You did not max three weapon skills with the same character doing anything that any of us can realistically expect to be able to do, or even know about. Since you apparently didn't do it by sparring, I can't even begin to imagine what method will let you max out three different weapon skills while being legitimate enough that a staff member will do it. More likely you had to resort to completely absurd methods that, if done by a player, would earn us a litany of scathing account notes and punitive animations. It probably involved tricks and locations that many players wouldn't even know exist.

I've had plenty of characters that got to that infamous skill plateau, which happens very quickly. Almost nothing will dodge you from then on, certainly nothing that you can go out and fight on a regular basis without taking such extreme liberties with the concept of roleplaying that it can't possibly be held as a standard. There's a long list of valid character concepts for which conventional sparring isn't an option at all. You said it yourself: you ditched the character because it was boring AF. Haven't you just identified the problem? We don't want to resort to playing dwarves so we can concoct a focus of "marry a mantis" to try and justify fighting mantis seated in the dark every day. We want to be able to get past the unsatisfyingly low plateau doing things that make sense.

Quoteyou won't probably get to the upper echelons of fighting prowess unless you put your character at risk. Some would say this is crazy.

As others have also noted, most of the risks that one can take while still doing anything that can be called roleplaying are risks that get you nowhere. Namino pointed it out very plainly: the things that are dangerous will, for the most part, never dodge you. The things that will dodge you are, for the most part, never dangerous. There's a select few highly obscure exceptions, but I'm not climbing a mountain to fight kiyet lions on my ass with a character that has no possible explanation for doing so, because I know staff will fry me if I get caught doing that. I've tried all the other shit that's on the fringes of acceptability like packs of tarantulas, squads of gith, big-game hunting, etc. Doesn't get you anywhere. You stop missing before you've even hit <advanced>.

My last raider ended up at journeyman in his chosen weapon skill. I don't think journeyman is the threshold to the "upper echelons of fighting prowess." Here's a list of things that are quite dangerous but no longer provided any progress at that point:
Gith
Mantis
Braxat
Dujat
Anakore
Drov beetle
Rantarri
Gwoshi
Bahamet
Tarantula
Tembo
Carru

Often I had to run for my life after fighting these things, without having seen a single dodge. I searched high and low for anything that could dodge and there just wasn't anything. I didn't travel to the very ends of the world to shit all over the spirit of the game by fighting some obscure creature that I had no reason to even know about, but maybe I should have. I might have been able to eke out a little more piercing skill by fighting seated with a crooked arrow in hand, but we're not supposed to do that shit. We get punished if caught.

And that's to say nothing of the characters who just can't go and do these things. If you're stuck in the Arm of the Dragon, say goodbye to any such ambitions. Sparring is a dead end save for the aforementioned stars-aligning miracle where you get to rub shoulders with some long-lived fighter who has that mythological combination of high defense and a willingness to spar regularly. With most of the clanned combat chars I've played, there just wasn't one of those around. Simply didn't exist, and it was raw dumb luck the couple of times it did. It wasn't me taking risks, it wasn't me being ambitious and diligent and making things happen through glorious, game-enriching roleplay. It was just that the right dude happened to be in the clan at the same time as me.

I really just want a game where I don't have to do absurd shit that barely qualifies as roleplay when I get that occasional urge to play a fighter who's genuinely good. It's not some kind of crime to want that. That doesn't make me some scumbag who's just obsessed with seeing <master> everywhere so I can PK all who stand in my way. A good player is not measured by whether or not he cares about his combat skills. That's not a sensible way to think about a MUD where murder, corruption and betrayal is supposed to be what we care most about. Why this bizarre social stigma against those who want to explore that aspect of the skill system? If we're not supposed to care about combat skills, why have them at all?  There's a whole category of classes that pretty much only have combat skills.

If crazy, death-defying adventures were what it took to get the last few notches then sure, why not. Make us fight silt-horrors with our arms tied behind our backs to become the best warrior that ever lived. But that's not the way it works. That stuff is what it takes to get past the point you reached in a RL month. You can't tell me it makes sense that that's all it takes to get to where you have to do Conan-style shit to get better, but that's the reality in most cases.

Quote from: Greve on March 14, 2019, 05:49:39 AM

QuoteAnd for heavy combat characters, a fighter to test the new skills.  And because I was worried, because of Nergal's changes, whether what I was doing with the heavy classes would make it so someone couldn't even reach caps. And the results of that? I got to insanely high off/def levels.  I maxed two weapon skills getting to insane high off/def levels.  I maxed another weapon skill after I already had the insane high level of off/def. And then I promptly stored the character having tested what I wanted, because it was boring AF. Normally I wouldn't talk about it, but it seems folks have this idea that it isn't possible.  It is definately possible, it just isn't likely.

I'm very skeptical that you did this using methods that are readily available to players. You did not max three weapon skills with the same character doing anything that any of us can realistically expect to be able to do, or even know about. Since you apparently didn't do it by sparring, I can't even begin to imagine what method will let you max out three different weapon skills while being legitimate enough that a staff member will do it. More likely you had to resort to completely absurd methods that, if done by a player, would earn us a litany of scathing account notes and punitive animations. It probably involved tricks and locations that many players wouldn't even know exist.

I've had plenty of characters that got to that infamous skill plateau, which happens very quickly. Almost nothing will dodge you from then on, certainly nothing that you can go out and fight on a regular basis without taking such extreme liberties with the concept of roleplaying that it can't possibly be held as a standard. There's a long list of valid character concepts for which conventional sparring isn't an option at all. You said it yourself: you ditched the character because it was boring AF. Haven't you just identified the problem? We don't want to resort to playing dwarves so we can concoct a focus of "marry a mantis" to try and justify fighting mantis seated in the dark every day. We want to be able to get past the unsatisfyingly low plateau doing things that make sense.

Quoteyou won't probably get to the upper echelons of fighting prowess unless you put your character at risk. Some would say this is crazy.

As others have also noted, most of the risks that one can take while still doing anything that can be called roleplaying are risks that get you nowhere. Namino pointed it out very plainly: the things that are dangerous will, for the most part, never dodge you. The things that will dodge you are, for the most part, never dangerous. There's a select few highly obscure exceptions, but I'm not climbing a mountain to fight kiyet lions on my ass with a character that has no possible explanation for doing so, because I know staff will fry me if I get caught doing that. I've tried all the other shit that's on the fringes of acceptability like packs of tarantulas, squads of gith, big-game hunting, etc. Doesn't get you anywhere. You stop missing before you've even hit <advanced>.

My last raider ended up at journeyman in his chosen weapon skill. I don't think journeyman is the threshold to the "upper echelons of fighting prowess." Here's a list of things that are quite dangerous but no longer provided any progress at that point:
Gith
Mantis
Braxat
Dujat
Anakore
Drov beetle
Rantarri
Gwoshi
Bahamet
Tarantula
Tembo
Carru

Often I had to run for my life after fighting these things, without having seen a single dodge. I searched high and low for anything that could dodge and there just wasn't anything. I didn't travel to the very ends of the world to shit all over the spirit of the game by fighting some obscure creature that I had no reason to even know about, but maybe I should have. I might have been able to eke out a little more piercing skill by fighting seated with a crooked arrow in hand, but we're not supposed to do that shit. We get punished if caught.

And that's to say nothing of the characters who just can't go and do these things. If you're stuck in the Arm of the Dragon, say goodbye to any such ambitions. Sparring is a dead end save for the aforementioned stars-aligning miracle where you get to rub shoulders with some long-lived fighter who has that mythological combination of high defense and a willingness to spar regularly. With most of the clanned combat chars I've played, there just wasn't one of those around. Simply didn't exist, and it was raw dumb luck the couple of times it did. It wasn't me taking risks, it wasn't me being ambitious and diligent and making things happen through glorious, game-enriching roleplay. It was just that the right dude happened to be in the clan at the same time as me.

I really just want a game where I don't have to do absurd shit that barely qualifies as roleplay when I get that occasional urge to play a fighter who's genuinely good. It's not some kind of crime to want that. That doesn't make me some scumbag who's just obsessed with seeing <master> everywhere so I can PK all who stand in my way. A good player is not measured by whether or not he cares about his combat skills. That's not a sensible way to think about a MUD where murder, corruption and betrayal is supposed to be what we care most about. Why this bizarre social stigma against those who want to explore that aspect of the skill system? If we're not supposed to care about combat skills, why have them at all?  There's a whole category of classes that pretty much only have combat skills.

If crazy, death-defying adventures were what it took to get the last few notches then sure, why not. Make us fight silt-horrors with our arms tied behind our backs to become the best warrior that ever lived. But that's not the way it works. That stuff is what it takes to get past the point you reached in a RL month. You can't tell me it makes sense that that's all it takes to get to where you have to do Conan-style shit to get better, but that's the reality in most cases.

Those creatures don't all belong in the same category. There's only two there that would stand any chance of helping you out from a weapon skill perspective, from my experience.

I think the new system is weird and doesn't make a lot of intuitive sense... but the old system was clunky and didn't make a lot of sense intuitively either.

I do think IC motivation for combat PC's to do pretty crazy things just to test themselves and improve, even when it means risking their lives, has a lot more validity than we give credence. A warrior testing them-self, and coming out the other side stronger, on something really dangerous makes more sense than testing them-self on a small rodent while laying down. You can look in history to find examples, but you don't have to go that far, every highschool has a kid (who most people thought was crazy) that will fight anybody and gets tougher and tougher as they gain real experience, every MMA club has guys that get better by getting experience in real matches, and I'm sure the same goes in the military for soldiers that have battle experience and those that don't. Training shouldn't be enough to make your PC max skills.

On the sparring partner situation - it makes sense that not every clan has a PC that can give you the fails that you need for gains. IRL there is only one John Danaher in BJJ, and people fly all over North America to train with him, and he makes all kinds of cash for it, and I'm sure there are sorts of other IRL examples. Likewise, PC's that have achieved the level of being able to provide significant skill-gains should be able to demand a high-price from employers and trainees. Go find a badass and spend coins on training, if you're PC is scared to do it the hard way, instead of spending coins on luxury items and apartments.

Someone mention spiders tho. Everything everyone said is completely valid to say but spiders dont seem to be mentioned on any of these graphs or list and they are superior to turaal very quickly.

These must be being ommited to prove a point or something? Again I agree with most of what is being said but spiders are great. And spooky. And dangerous. And fun.

I don't mind the current system but was defo calling out the 3 weapon skills mastered in rl month thing.

I feel like stalkers have a significant edge because they can reliably spot and count them.

QuoteThose creatures don't all belong in the same category. There's only two there that would stand any chance of helping you out from a weapon skill perspective, from my experience.

That list comprises just about everything that you can go and fight at will without inviting serious questions about twinking. How do you figure that only two of them fit the bill of a worthwhile challenge? Several of them can kill a human in two or three hits. All of them are ICly considered dangerous. If not these, what the hell is supposed to qualify as something you should be able to gain skills on? Again, I'm not talking about reaching master, I'm talking about getting past the early- or mid-journeyman. With any other kind of skill, having journeyman means you're barely competent.

The thing that's wrong with the code is the totally arbitrary nature of what qualifies as a sufficiently risky fight. It's all down to whether or not the mobile has enough defense and agility. Nothing else matters. It can be a literal dragon that breathes fire and has five hundred hit points, but if the builder didn't give it enough defense to dodge attacks from a militia private, it somehow doesn't count as risking your life where skillgains are concerned. You can't begin to look for logic in that. Is a mekillot not a risky fight? Because it sure won't get you to advanced.

QuoteI do think IC motivation for combat PC's to do pretty crazy things just to test themselves and improve, even when it means risking their lives, has a lot more validity than we give credence.

The problem isn't that that's possible. The problem is the lack of equal alternatives. It's wrong that going on suicidal adventures to obscure places in search of anything nimble is just about the only way to see meaningful improvement to combat skills past an obstacle that arrives far too quickly.

QuoteOn the sparring partner situation - it makes sense that not every clan has a PC that can give you the fails that you need for gains.

No it doesn't! We're talking about entire armies and mercenary companies! It makes no sense at all. Most of the time, becoming a soldier is the very worst way to learn to fight, which is the exact opposite of how it should be. It makes absolutely zero sense that because there happens to be no long-lived warrior amongst the five or so active players in the world's greatest army, that entire army just loses the ability to adequately train.

And yet again, the whole problem boils down to the fact that gains are gated exclusively behind getting your attacks dodged. It's such an artificial construct that there's no point trying to rationalize it. You don't need to be an already great fighter to get stuck, it can happen even before you've reached journeyman. A couple of years ago I played in the AoD and there just didn't happen to be anyone in the clan with more than a month or two on their PCs, so nobody could dodge me at apprentice. Should one just accept that this was the limit of training for soldiers in Allanak that year? Of course not. That's completely absurd. This was of course an unusual situation as there tends to be at least someone who can get you past apprentice, but even then, you're most likely getting stuck at journeyman instead. The amount of defense necessary for people to get past journeyman from sparring with you is so high that more often than not, there's nobody in any given clan who has it.

QuoteIRL there is only one John Danaher in BJJ, and people fly all over North America to train with him, and he makes all kinds of cash for it, and I'm sure there are sorts of other IRL examples. Likewise, PC's that have achieved the level of being able to provide significant skill-gains should be able to demand a high-price from employers and trainees. Go find a badass and spend coins on training, if you're PC is scared to do it the hard way, instead of spending coins on luxury items and apartments.

Training with John Danaher is not a requisite for obtaining the purple belt. If this thread had been full of people complaining that it was too hard to get the last five points toward the skillcap, what you said might make sense. Since we're talking about the prohibitive difficulty of getting past a level which for all other skills barely qualifies as competent, it doesn't.

I just want to jump on the train that "Getting weapon skills isn't difficult, and in some cases isn't even very risky, but the behavior we have to engage in commonly warrants a 'world response' from staff that then BECOMES risky."

I found a way to get Gavin to branch slashing weapons into knives, because since day one my goal was for him to be a close-combat brawler, not an elite fighter. But we can't start with knives, and I kind of gave it up. Once I found out how to branch, I was temp-banned, chastised, got account notes, and I don't think I ever got the knife-weapons I ordered.

I had to go to pretty stupid extremes and, as a top-tier warrior, joined a lesser organization just to justify that I was "hunting" these lesser creatures. Again, it wasn't HARD, it was stupid to have to do. I would GLADLY have paid 1000 coins per session for a PC or NPC that would get me a good workout, but that is an unrealistic requirement.

I was reading the complaint that it's difficult to achieve upper echelons/mastery skill levels.

I think combat proficiency is still very attainable.

I'm here to echo Greve and say everything he said is correct. Completely on the money. So much so that I had to log in and comment. My Arm of the Dragon Sergeant reached that plateau of never being able to get better somewhere around high journeyman. I couldn't justify going off the plantation to go fight gortoks while sitting in the dark; and my clan staffer at that time, Cavaticus, completely shot down the attempt I made to contract the Byn with my money to get some training.

Gating skill progression behind misses is a flawed, anti-roleplay system. It's the most amateur implementation of a combat progression system conceived, designed to work simply and across the board with a hack and slash MUD. This is supposedly one of the last great RPIs still alive. Why do these anti-RPI features remain in the game?

I encourage the dev team to take just one more note from WotC (among the many already taken) and implement a Challenge Rating for each monster. Have your NPC's challenge rating calculated dynamically according to their stats. Make it so that when you fight someone with a higher CR than you, you gain skills. This would take a month at most with a good sprint team.

Overload the assess command to compare your CR intuitively against others (with random variance). Give players a pathway of progression short of twinking. Spend a few hours implementing a code solution, rather than an indefinite amount of maintenance hours punishing players. The game would be better off for it.

Some folks seem to have a lot of emotion involved with this topic. There is also a lot of fuzziness, because of words like "competent" and "maxed" that are not well defined.  And a lot of worrying about a character, rather than the gameworld.  Which brings up a point I would like to reiterate:

Quote from: Brokkr on March 13, 2019, 11:36:28 AM
That would not be desirable from a staff perspective, as players are on the same scale as our NPCs.

Many games, if a PC can get to 100 skill in combat, NPCs can get to 150 or 200 in that thing.  That is not how it works here for some key skills. Instead of capping PCs at the 100 out of 200 mark, Arm has what you call the plateau.  The game as currently designed leaves the ability to get more skilled than that, but it becomes more similar to how games with open ended skills work, although instead of decreasing benefit over a steady skill gain rate Arm has taken the direction of making skill gains harder and harder to come by.

Arm could have taken the approach of capping skills below what they currently cap at for combat.  For 99%+ of characters, it would effectively be the same.  It would also mean that the effective skill learning life of a character was much shorter, which is not good in a game where some characters have 100+ DAYS of playtime.  You may throw rocks at the Arm design, but when you are doing so I see very little in the way of being on the same page as the gameworld goals.  Like making it so new characters see real progression, but 100+ Day characters likely still have some potential for progression, without letting them become game breakingly powerful?

When the goal is to make it so most combat characters become competent, but very few get beyond that, because it starts to make the game world wonky? You can't approach a system like this with just how it impact your character and their progression. That is one piece of the overall system.  I am sorry if this is mentally infuriating to achiever types that would like to go beyond competent, beyond really, really good and like to know they are the "best". But the way it is set up now, those kinds of characters, while possible, sort of break the system, especially if they are together. So the goal isn't to provide a realistic pathway that a soldier or Byn member can get to that point, the goal is to limit who can get to that point.  While from a character perspective I understand how this may seem unrealistic, but from a gameworld gameplay perspective it is absolutely realistic.

ps-A RL month?  Where did that come from?  Not anything I said.

I mentioned in Discord, an idea that kinda sucks but bear with me:

Mastery is like getting your Black Belt in Karate. You have "mastered" the basic techniques of slashing a sword. You are not a Grandmaster, you aren't a 1st Dan. You spent a few dedicated years to your study, and now you are a "master".

What if, at least for combat, "Master" wasn't 90/100, but "master" was around the high Jman/Low Advanced plateau that we're at. So when I type skills, I see "Master".

Leave it up to roleplay, logs, and seeking out advanced warriors (NPC or PC) to learn from, and staff can add 10-15 points to your skill to put you at that "step above" everyone else. Attainable, but you have to apply for it and add more than sparring turaal while seated.

I mean... that... or loosen up on the judgement when you see us fighting gortok in the dark or at least start the conversation about why we feel we need to, rather than immediate clownhammer bans. Regardless of if its possible or reasonable, the way you've designed the game is to force combat characters to do some really silly and out of character to advance, then punish us for wanting to advance.

Yet my merchant can fail to make an arrow 20 times in a row and nobody animates a dozen gith raiding party.

I dunno why people do weird shit to advance.  I don't pretend to understand the code, but I think people who do weird shit have very strange misconceptions about how the game works.  It strictly isn't necessary.

I've played at least one combat PC, who wasn't a half-giant, who could take on some of the nastiest NPCs in the game.  The PC got that way with regular fighting and training.  Nothing wonky.  The PC didn't even hunt, so there wasn't much for purposeful animal fighting, and certainly no fighting gortok in the dark.

They definitely didn't have peak combat abilities, either -- they weren't "maxed out."  You do not have to be maxed out to be an absolute monster.  I know some people get joy out of making progression, but the current code lets you get to the point that you're, quiet seriously, possibly game breaking.  If you were to act smartly and irresponsibly, you could do a lot of serious coded damage, and the only thing that can possibly kill you is a mix of bad luck and poor decisions.

I think the point though, Feco, is that for those of us who ARE achievers, we want to see that we CAN be "master" at something. Bragging rights be damned, it feels good to know you achieved that "final level".

You can be "more than competent" at combat at this plateau. But this plateau has you at Journeyman in your skills. Before we could SEE our skill levels, we knew how strong we were by what we COULDN'T fight... but you can't have a Bynner go off and fight gith and mantis and stupid stuff for "no reason" just to find a challenge, mostly because there are the stories that when you DO, staff animate something to kick your butt.

I want to be a master slashing. On any of my PCs that attained it, I didn't kill a single other PC with those skills. I didn't even go to RPTs for it.

But I used it as a plot point that... yes. I AM a master in this skill, so you should learn from me.

#makeMasterMatter

So... serious question here... what would you do when you did hit master?

What would keep you engaged in the character?

Achievement is great and I definitely have some of those tendencies, but you have got to learn to love the journey. Otherwise once you've ticked off all those skill boxes you are just gonna be sitting there like "now what?"

Quote from: Delirium on March 14, 2019, 04:21:38 PM
So... serious question here... what would you do when you did hit master?

What would keep you engaged in the character?

Achievement is great and I definitely have some of those tendencies, but you have got to learn to love the journey. Otherwise once you've ticked off all those skill boxes you are just gonna be sitting there like "now what?"

I haven't theorycrafted beyond that yet. I toyed with like "Each class can Grandmaster 3 skills that they get to Master, but these can only be taught through RP, either by a GM PC or an NPC", but ... that's what guilds are for in the first place.

I mean I'm fine with "I'm master slashing, but I still miss, so obviously I need to work on my offense since my technique is damned good now." Learn how to fight gith for a while, learn how to fight mantis, study their combat, make a thing out of it. You don't need the misses for SKILL anymore, unless you also want to be a master with the axe. If you lower the caps, there's a better chance of "mastering" more than one skill.

Unfortunately, its combat focused and I can't imagine having to be a crafter and can only Grandmaster tanning, woodworking, and haggle and suddenly you're forever stuck. I like the idea of eventual specialization but it doesn't work for Arm's current climate.

Also I don't know who said something about enforcer climb, but unless you're an elf I wouldn't rely too heavily on using it except as an escape maneuver upwards. Fails often enough at cap, even with tools, that you're gonna eat shit when it counts eventually.

Quote from: Feco on March 14, 2019, 03:13:52 PM
I dunno why people do weird shit to advance.  I don't pretend to understand the code, but I think people who do weird shit have very strange misconceptions about how the game works.  It strictly isn't necessary.

I've played at least one combat PC, who wasn't a half-giant, who could take on some of the nastiest NPCs in the game.  The PC got that way with regular fighting and training.  Nothing wonky.  The PC didn't even hunt, so there wasn't much for purposeful animal fighting, and certainly no fighting gortok in the dark.

They definitely didn't have peak combat abilities, either -- they weren't "maxed out."  You do not have to be maxed out to be an absolute monster.  I know some people get joy out of making progression, but the current code lets you get to the point that you're, quiet seriously, possibly game breaking.  If you were to act smartly and irresponsibly, you could do a lot of serious coded damage, and the only thing that can possibly kill you is a mix of bad luck and poor decisions.

I agree...I mean, my last combat-heavy PC wasn't advanced in a weapon skill, and could easily take on 6-10 Gith at once with the use of disarm/parry being what it was.

Quote from: Brokkr on March 14, 2019, 11:54:43 AM
Some folks seem to have a lot of emotion involved with this topic. There is also a lot of fuzziness, because of words like "competent" and "maxed" that are not well defined.  And a lot of worrying about a character, rather than the gameworld.  Which brings up a point I would like to reiterate:

Quote from: Brokkr on March 13, 2019, 11:36:28 AM
That would not be desirable from a staff perspective, as players are on the same scale as our NPCs.

Many games, if a PC can get to 100 skill in combat, NPCs can get to 150 or 200 in that thing.  That is not how it works here for some key skills. Instead of capping PCs at the 100 out of 200 mark, Arm has what you call the plateau.  The game as currently designed leaves the ability to get more skilled than that, but it becomes more similar to how games with open ended skills work, although instead of decreasing benefit over a steady skill gain rate Arm has taken the direction of making skill gains harder and harder to come by.

Arm could have taken the approach of capping skills below what they currently cap at for combat.  For 99%+ of characters, it would effectively be the same.  It would also mean that the effective skill learning life of a character was much shorter, which is not good in a game where some characters have 100+ DAYS of playtime.  You may throw rocks at the Arm design, but when you are doing so I see very little in the way of being on the same page as the gameworld goals.  Like making it so new characters see real progression, but 100+ Day characters likely still have some potential for progression, without letting them become game breakingly powerful?

When the goal is to make it so most combat characters become competent, but very few get beyond that, because it starts to make the game world wonky? You can't approach a system like this with just how it impact your character and their progression. That is one piece of the overall system.  I am sorry if this is mentally infuriating to achiever types that would like to go beyond competent, beyond really, really good and like to know they are the "best". But the way it is set up now, those kinds of characters, while possible, sort of break the system, especially if they are together. So the goal isn't to provide a realistic pathway that a soldier or Byn member can get to that point, the goal is to limit who can get to that point.  While from a character perspective I understand how this may seem unrealistic, but from a gameworld gameplay perspective it is absolutely realistic.

The problem here is that you've designed all these cool classes, right? You can pick one class and get a bunch of crafts, another to get a bunch of stealth shit, and a third to get better at fighting than the rest. Journeyman weapon skills is the domain of the very worst classes with regards to combat. Yet this is where even the best combat classes will typically plateau, moreso now than ever because some start with higher offense than even warriors did before, and your offense vs their defense determines skillgain chances. I realize there are other factors in combat besides just weapon skills, but that is one of the primary ones.

Before the new classes, it was easier to stomach getting stuck at journeyman slashing or whatever with a warrior or ranger because you still had a guild monopoly on a lot of other things. Subguilds aside, warriors were the only ones with disarm, bash and kick, and rangers were the only ones with high archery and all that wilderness stuff. The new classes have so much overlap in comparison to the guilds that there's not the same kind of "it's okay" factor. Being stuck at journeyman weapon skills with a raider feels pretty bad when you could just have made a scout or stalker instead.

Quoteps-A RL month?  Where did that come from?  Not anything I said.

I said that. That's about how long it takes to reach the point where nothing you can realistically fight on a regular basis will let you improve anymore. That's the whole crux of the issue, Brokkr. I get what you mean about relativity in power levels and all that, but at the end of the day, we're playing a game where weapon skills stop improving through normal gameplay at such an early point that it just doesn't feel right.

And aside from all this talk of weapon skills themselves, I would still like to hear your sentiments on this irritating issue where it's all gated behind nothing but dodges, and where the hidden offense skill becomes your enemy in the long run. Could we at least get something that counteracts the latter? It's such a stupid problem. Offense and defense represent "general combat experience," right? Why, then, does it hinder improvement? How is it explained that the more experience you have with fighting, the harder it becomes to add a new fighting style to your repertoire? Reality works in the stark opposite way.

I suggest at least two changes:

1) Parry and block qualifies for skillgains. It was once hinted that they would, but we all know they don't.

2) Weapon skill, not offense, determines whether or not your target's defense is high enough to gain.

Summarising!

Side: We really want to advance in combat skills without doing silly unrealistic stuff. Advancing combat skills satisfying for us and we don't want to be punished for the lack of ways to realistically progress, which is a large part of what we find enjoyable. Here are some ways we could do it.

Other Side: If you advanced much further in skill gains, you'd be game-breakingly powerful. You can already get wildly strong without <master> or even <advanced>. We don't really want PCs to be able to bare-handedly kill three half-giant soldiers. It's already possible, though difficult, and we don't want to make it more possible or less difficult because of the impact on the world.

Best Solution: Make journeyman combat skills say <master>, with anything above that saying <OMG SO EPIC!!> or <nachos with hot sauce>.

Quote from: Riev on March 14, 2019, 04:09:47 PM
I think the point though, Feco, is that for those of us who ARE achievers, we want to see that we CAN be "master" at something. Bragging rights be damned, it feels good to know you achieved that "final level".

You can be "more than competent" at combat at this plateau. But this plateau has you at Journeyman in your skills. Before we could SEE our skill levels, we knew how strong we were by what we COULDN'T fight... but you can't have a Bynner go off and fight gith and mantis and stupid stuff for "no reason" just to find a challenge, mostly because there are the stories that when you DO, staff animate something to kick your butt.

I want to be a master slashing. On any of my PCs that attained it, I didn't kill a single other PC with those skills. I didn't even go to RPTs for it.

But I used it as a plot point that... yes. I AM a master in this skill, so you should learn from me.

#makeMasterMatter

I would like to add that I had mastered several skills on the PC in question.  It just took time.  The advancement was slower, but I think that makes perfect sense.

Oops wrong thread

Quote from: Feco on March 15, 2019, 08:19:51 AM

I would like to add that I had mastered several skills on the PC in question.  It just took time.  The advancement was slower, but I think that makes perfect sense.

The time factor, I'm okay with. Honestly. I've had PCs at 50days played that were still learning stuff and I'm a bit of a code-focused person.

The point is that non-combat classes can reach (master) in their respective and specialized skills "easily" when compared to combat classes. Rightly so in a PvP game, and in a world where PCs and NPCs are on the same coded skill sheets. Again, I GET IT. I'm just saying... reduce the cap for weapon skills then, and make it so that advancement has more to do with time, roleplay, and IC consequences and less me trying to find the turaal that spawned with max agility and "fail my bash" every time.

I have NO problem saying "I want to be a grandmaster mace wielder, but to be that I have to study under someone who knows the techniques", so long as staff are loose about the request when there ARE no PCs (or no PCs in your playtime) to accommodate. There should never be a time where someone offers a Byn Officer 1000 coins for a month of advanced training and told "no", but NOT give them opportunity to then do it with Tor or something.

I would like to add that I had mastered several skills on the PC in question.  It just took time.  The advancement was slower, but I think that makes perfect sense.

Why would someone want to be a master at, say, slashing weapons?

You've all been focusing on NPCs. What about PC vs PC?

A recent character more or less became part of two separate tournaments by simply being there. He would have liked to have won the higher prizes. He would have liked to have had the acclaim and recognition that comes with winning.

Sometimes the arena is opened to volunteers, or a leader requires followers to join in a performance there. Very public, all of Allanak watching. Again, he would have liked to have had the acclaim and recognition. And deterrence to those who might try to murder him.

Or just plain kicking the ass of would-be assassins, blocking arrows, blocking throwing weapons, twisting aside of daggers in the back, driving off raiders who thought they could do you in out in the wastelands.

What about Staff vs PC? Sometimes PCs end up in the shit, with a horde of gith attacking, for example. High skills means your PC might survive where others don't.

There are plenty of examples of why one's PC might reasonably want this.

There are tons of stories in East Asian, I think mostly China?, folk lore/history of generals doing absolutely bat shit feats of physical strength. I think most are like, cleaving an army in one swing but some are more realistic, like killing 100 men at a time.

I don't see why a PC couldn't have some stupid goal like this of becoming a master swordsmen.
Obviously if they attempt the 100 men at a time thing before being hella ready they are fucking dead.

Not understanding how PC vs PC changes anything.  Aren't other PCs under (codewise) the same constraints as you?  If there are IC constraints that cause your ability to differ....well that is the way the cookie crumbles.

I swore I was done but here I am again.

The issue isn't that it's hard to get to master skills in Armageddon. I don't know why this issue is being conflated the real problem.

Brokkr, it is not difficult to master skills in Armageddon. It may be a tedious and uninspiring process, but if you know what you're doing you'll get there 100% of the time, every single time, barring death from unrelated activities interrupting the climb. The defining factor between someone mastering and someone remaining mediocre forever is meta knowledge and the willingness to use it, and that's my fundamental issue with the whole system. You're arguing from a position that seems to assume my arguments are rooted in complaints that it is too difficult to achieve mastery. My argument is quite the opposite. It's too easy, as well as based on unrealistic, uninspired mechanics. So instead of defending them, let's propose some alternate solutions to demonstrate that we're being constructive.

Imagine a world where instead of seeking out dodges, skill gain was tied to how many hits you landed on an opponent before the fight was over. (Edit again: Let me be clear. You have to land your hits on ONE opponent. They don't stack between fights.) Maybe this would be three or four hits when you're a novice, but by the time you hit advanced, the requirement is that you score (not attempt, but land) 15-20 hits on a single enemy before you tick up a skill level. Suddenly, turaal are useless. The only valid targets in the world for training are incredibly defensive sparring partners who parry/block you effectively (because unskilled training partners will run out of HP rapidly), or tanky megafauna like mekillot and bahamet who can soak up enough hits before biting it.

Here's the thing about mekillot that makes them different from turaal. They can kill people who are fighting them with low-advanced combat skills. Pretty effectively. Let's be insanely generous and say there's a 5% chance of being killed by a mek every time you attack one. Since it takes hundreds of skill ups to go from advanced to master, and you only have to get killed once to stop your rise, that compounds itself, making it an infinitesimally small chance that you survive to master. You can mitigate danger by playing things smart and not taking unnecessary risks, but there will always be risk. Edit: Because math is fun, the actual chance of dying in your first 100 contests with Mekillots with a 5% lethality rate per exchange is 99.4%.

In this world, everyone, even yourself, gets what they want. Achievers like me get to have a dangerous, reckless pursuit that makes our balls feel big, and demonstrates that we fought long, long, long odds and triumphed. And you get what you want, because you actually achieve your stated goal -- limiting people from being able to achieve 'game breaking' levels of strength. In this hypothetical world, people are limited from achieving it not because the path to power is hidden, but because the path to power is so steep, so treacherous, that 99.5% of them die during the ascent. This is infinitely better for your purposes than the current system, in which achieving mastery is obscure for many players, but an effortless pursuit for metagaming assholes like myself who can achieve it unfailingly with enough time.

I may be way behind the curve here, but I thought the situation being described was this:

Previously (a few years ago) in Armageddon, prior to the changes in how combat skills are raised, the doge economy ruled:
* The best way to git gud was by fighting creatures who (a) dodge your hits and (b) can hit you.
* Sparring in a clan will only get you to mid-tolerable levels of skill.
* The complaint: clanned characters don't git gut, isolated play and weird/dangerous behavior rewarded.

Today, after the changes to how combat skills are raised:
* The best way to git gut is by fighting people/creatures with higher offense and defense than you; i.e. sparring in a clan. Better by far if you have a combat expert to train with, but two equally-matched fighters will also consistently gain skill at a slower pace.
* Fighting creatures you'd reasonably be willing to fight will only get you to mid-tolerable levels of skill.
* The complaint: clanned characters are now okay; isolated characters can't git gud without even weirder, more dangerous behavior than before.

Is that roughly accurate?

Quote from: Brytta Léofa on March 15, 2019, 01:44:03 PM
I may be way behind the curve here, but I thought the situation being described was this:

Previously (a few years ago) in Armageddon, prior to the changes in how combat skills are raised, the doge economy ruled:
* The best way to git gud was by fighting creatures who (a) dodge your hits and (b) can hit you.
* Sparring in a clan will only get you to mid-tolerable levels of skill.
* The complaint: clanned characters don't git gut, isolated play and weird/dangerous behavior rewarded.

Today, after the changes to how combat skills are raised:
* The best way to git gut is by fighting people/creatures with higher offense and defense than you; i.e. sparring in a clan. Better by far if you have a combat expert to train with, but two equally-matched fighters will also consistently gain skill at a slower pace.
* Fighting creatures you'd reasonably be willing to fight will only get you to mid-tolerable levels of skill.
* The complaint: clanned characters are now okay; isolated characters can't git gud without even weirder, more dangerous behavior than before.

Is that roughly accurate?

The best way to skill up is still to fight creatures that dodge you. As recently as August I was mastering skills fighting canyon rats. Sparring is better if you have a partner who is willing to metagame with you, but even in a clan you're in a rough spot if you don't have access to someone who is A) good enough and B) willing to etwo for your ep and trade off. Having enjoyed being in a sparring clan with another metagaming asshole on the character before last, I'd argue the two are pretty interchangeable, with my preference for wildlife because at least then you're not subjecting all the recruits in you clan to having to watch you and your bro have a 45 RL minute spar.  :P

Quote from: Riev on March 15, 2019, 11:08:50 AM

Quote from: Feco on March 15, 2019, 08:19:51 AM

I would like to add that I had mastered several skills on the PC in question.  It just took time.  The advancement was slower, but I think that makes perfect sense.

The time factor, I'm okay with. Honestly. I've had PCs at 50days played that were still learning stuff and I'm a bit of a code-focused person.

The point is that non-combat classes can reach (master) in their respective and specialized skills "easily" when compared to combat classes. Rightly so in a PvP game, and in a world where PCs and NPCs are on the same coded skill sheets. Again, I GET IT. I'm just saying... reduce the cap for weapon skills then, and make it so that advancement has more to do with time, roleplay, and IC consequences and less me trying to find the turaal that spawned with max agility and "fail my bash" every time.

I think I'm doing a piss poor job saying what I mean.  Lemme reword:

I managed to get mastered combat skill(s) with just a time commitment.  It happened pretty naturally by training with other PCs, and just fighting when fighting came about.  No need to do anything super funky or gamey.  At all.  I suspect the problem people have is that the time commitment is too long?

The time commitment to "max out" a PC is absurd, yes.  But the PC I'm talking about was scary before mastering any skill.  A fighting PC gets competent pretty quickly.  It's the absolutely frightening, once-in-a-lifetime skill-level PCs that take the silly amounts of time, and I see no problem with that.

I'd be very much against lowering the cap and instituting rules for staff to give bumps after roleplay.   Staff don't need the extra workload, and those higher skills levels can be attained normally over the course of play.

So...We all agree, Stalkers SHOULD, get master archery.

Quote from: Krath on March 15, 2019, 04:40:51 PM
So...We all agree, Stalkers SHOULD, get master archery.

No.

Quote from: Vex on March 15, 2019, 05:27:05 PM

Quote from: Krath on March 15, 2019, 04:40:51 PM
So...We all agree, Stalkers SHOULD, get master archery.

No.

Nah. Mostly, pretty much alright with the way skills have been shunted around, and how you have access to combos you never had before. So while we lost a few things, I think we gained some freedom in creating a character tuned to us.

I have no issues with the weapon skills soft caps. Though in the past certain classes did not raise O/D that quickly wonder if that has changed, or if they will have an easier time with weapon skills since offense will be slower to rise.

Enforcer makes me a bit sad though. The grind is very difficult and the pay off not that great IMO even if you do. That said, getting sap isn't that hard with sub-guilds. Backstab is great but you lack many of the supporting skills, and would need to sacrifice more utility if you choose slipknife to skip the grind. It just feels like if you need to factor in extended-subguilds there are much more interesting options.

It appears I have one of the last rangers left alive. Buahahahahaha

Quote from: Nile on April 07, 2019, 08:53:29 PM
It appears I have one of the last rangers left alive. Buahahahahaha

Covet it and regard it as a treasure. There will never be such a thing ever again. You will cry when you lose it and need to conform to the new way of things. Never again will you see the days of having both master sneak/hide and master scan/listen.

Quote from: Cabooze on April 07, 2019, 09:01:05 PM

Quote from: Nile on April 07, 2019, 08:53:29 PM
It appears I have one of the last rangers left alive. Buahahahahaha

Covet it and regard it as a treasure. There will never be such a thing ever again. You will cry when you lose it and need to conform to the new way of things. Never again will you see the days of having both master sneak/hide and master scan/listen.

That is a fucking travesty. I was almost going to retire and start fresh because I'm several years out of practice....since my 30 day+ Red Fang was forced to retire/die by staff, but now I better try and survive. Thanks for the inspiration :P

I take it back. Game seems lame af now. See ya.

Bye.

Quote from: Nile on April 08, 2019, 12:10:08 AM
I take it back. Game seems lame af now. See ya.

What makes you say that?

Quote from: Nile on April 08, 2019, 12:10:08 AM
I take it back. Game seems lame af now. See ya.

I wouldn't let the naysayers turn you off. The new classes, at least those I've indulged in, are well-balanced and enjoyable. There is a number of vets, who seem to find fault in every little thing, but I attribute this to old man syndrome. That is, old people always think it used to be better and a change to the unfamiliar, is a crime against their person.

Stalker and miscreant are the two I've maxed out, and I found them to be extremely enjoyable. They'll afford you a broad range of options, and their combat prowess is more substantial in practice, than on paper. They just "work" really, really well. I've never been in a situation there, where I felt disappointed in my choice of class. Worth a try, imo.

Enforcer and infiltrator are the two that aren't... I won't say they're bad, exactly. Enforcer has odd branching, and is rather anemic compared to its raider counterpart, and infiltrator needs more oomph to validate it's stealth levels. The extra weapon skills are wasted, because if you're going infiltrator, you're going for backstab and that places you firmly, into the piercing camp. Give them a riposte for piercing weapons, or something... backstab is nice, but it isn't THAT nice.

If you're coming off a legacy guild, I wouldn't suggest either of those, but the rest should do you fine.

Quote from: ShaiHulud on March 10, 2019, 03:21:42 AM
I miss rangers, and think it is really sucky not to give Stalkers, master archery. Any support?

No. Old rangers were a bit too good. I think Stalker is a much more solid and alternative and every bit as playable as the ranger.

It does feel like enforcer needs just a little something. And that little something needs to trickle down to infiltrator.

However not really sure what that skill should be.

So I haven't played an enforcer, but on paper I'd have to say no to anymore combat stuff. If we're talking a little more utility I could get behind that. But Enforcers seem like they have enough combat skills with kick/bash/sap/backstab/disarm/threaten on top of master weapon skills.

Quote from: th3kaiser on April 10, 2019, 01:02:24 PM
So I haven't played an enforcer, but on paper I'd have to say no to anymore combat stuff. If we're talking a little more utility I could get behind that. But Enforcers seem like they have enough combat skills with kick/bash/sap/backstab/disarm/threaten on top of master weapon skills.

As we've said before, you may as well not count those master weapon skills. They're there as nod to other games with master weapons skills. It's a noob trap to assume you can get to that level. I'd lump backstab and sap in that category as well, honestly.

Isn't an advanced archery character still deadly as shit?

Why does everyone need to have master everything?

Just a utility skill like bandage perhaps.

All other classes are good but it feels like Enforcer and infiltrator can be good if(?)...

It is crazy deadly. But let's ignore the fact that you think you can't hit master. Which you can, it's just crazy difficult. The balance for these isn't about what levels you personally have hit after your 10 days played or whatever. It's the skill potential you can reach. A master weapon skill PC with master backstab/disarm/sap/bash/throw/threaten with a smattering of advanced skills is super deadly. Toss in the huge variety of subs/extended subs and mage subs...you really don't need more combat skills.

Like I said previous, a bit more utility? Sure. Moar combat? Please no.

You're right. I'm sure the amount of people able to hit master through normal means is a reasonable number. Something like the amount of people who were able to create an MMH. Remember when staff said that was difficult but entirely doable?

I'm also not arguing for more combat skills nor master archery, btw. I'm just stating that you may as well treat master weapons skills like riding on an elf character.

I understand your view. I think we even have a whole thread about it that's ongoing. I simply disagree. Glad we don't disagree on enforcers though!  ;D

I honestly like Enforcer quite a bit, even though their stealth skills are a bit limited. If anything I would give them disarm -> bash rather than bash -> disarm, because Bash is so incredibly silly and long to train. And they already have plenty of that with Sap/Backstab coming off weapon skills. Maybe listen to Jman or something.

Otherwise, I think they're cool.

In terms of seer utility you can pretty much compare infiltrators and scouts. Trade backstab for archery which is a pretty damn good, and you still have blowgun and crossbow for follow ups.  Depending on your subguild you almost have as much leathaility and utility in cities(rogue,thief, cutpurse,slipknife) while being great outdoors.

Its a steep trade off for sap for enforcers and if you aren't going for that you might as well have played raider.

I could see enforcer getting bandage and infiltrator getting lower level of it. Not sure if anything else fits.

bash->disarm (and kick->disarm for raiders) were done specifically to give Fighters a sort of curve based advantage.  At lower levels of skill, it gives Fighters a significant advantage in melee.  A long lived Enforcer/Raider, however, as the potential to make that disadvantage disappear.

It is relevant to this discussion, I think, that not all the classes were meant to be along the same time frame.  Some (especailly Enforcer) were designed for folks that like a longer development cycle.

Quote from: Brokkr on April 10, 2019, 08:18:53 PM
It is relevant to this discussion, I think, that not all the classes were meant to be along the same time frame.  Some (especailly Enforcer) were designed for folks that like a longer development cycle.

I think this is important enough to say again, and again, because through all these changes, it wasn't really explained like this. This makes perfect sense, to me.

Some Guilds are designed to be from 0-10days played and have the advantage during that time, but "heavy" classes will definitely outscale them in the long term.

So you're picking a Guild not just for what skills you want, but how long you INTEND on them being around. Pick a Light Combat class if you don't expect to live 30days played but you want to be able to engage in combat and be part of the fun.

Is that right?

I don't find any issue with branching disarm from another combat skill. They do take long but are possible.

With the combat changes backstab might not just take long but be  impossible to  branch.

If backstab and sap branched from disarm for enforcer that would make the skill take long without it feeling potentially impossible without the right subguild.

However this was intended I guess so..  :-\

I still think they need another utility skill espeically as they ae currently.

I played an assassin/Outlaw during the class changes, so combat was already changed.

I mastered backstab.

It isn't that hard TBH, not even the snarky 'HEHEH I MASTERED PIERCING WEAPONS' bullshit, (I played that fuck for like 15 days and only had apprentice but my dual wield was advanced so thanks code), but whenever I knew I had a chance to get a fail I took it.

Jihelu, sorry not quite sure what you mean? Combat changes dont effect dual wielding or backstab . They affect weapon skills which is required to branch sap/backstab on enforcer.

Quote from: Dresan on April 11, 2019, 12:48:12 PM
Jihelu, sorry not quite sure what you mean? Combat changes dont effect dual wielding or backstab . They affect weapon skills which is required to branch sap/backstab on enforcer.

It should be noted that skills can be set to branch off at any point in the source skills prowess, and is not limited to being advanced or master.

Quote from: mansa on April 11, 2019, 01:04:26 PM

Quote from: Dresan on April 11, 2019, 12:48:12 PM
Jihelu, sorry not quite sure what you mean? Combat changes dont effect dual wielding or backstab . They affect weapon skills which is required to branch sap/backstab on enforcer.

It should be noted that skills can be set to branch off at any point in the source skills prowess, and is not limited to being advanced or master.

Yup. Though this does not currently help enforcers very much at the moment as per previous staff posts. Long development is not the problem, but the feeling of no chance unless the stars align is perhaps a tad much.

Hopefully that's a branch at jman. Advanced can be a bit of a pain to get up to fairly quickly. I don't think I've gotten advanced weapons before 15 days played in recent times.

According to staff, just under what warriors branched advanced weapon skills at which with the boost in weapon skills its around low-mid advanced perhaps. There is another thread on weapon skills on general.

Quote from: Dresan on April 11, 2019, 02:38:13 PM
According to staff, just under what warriors branched advanced weapon skills at which with the boost in weapon skills its around low-mid advanced perhaps. There is another thread on weapon skills on general.

My bad, you said "Make mastering backstab impossible" So I thought you meant the like, goal of mastering backstab.

Not the goal of mastering a weapon skill, THEN backstab.

That shit would be fucking silly.

No I meant branching it. Anyways my point is wish enforcers had a couple more utility skills. Considering the other heavy combat classes get listen and scan, they could at least advanced watch.

Or I was thinking poison maybe branched from blowgun which would make backstab-sap completely justified for potentially never branching. 

I'm sorry, maybe I play the wrong sort of characters, but what kind of utilization does advanced and master watch have for a heavy fighting class?

The few times I've tended to use it, it hasn't really told me anything I really needed to know.

The one time I remember it being useful was discovering who the person was that had attempted to throw a ball of dung at someone in the Gaj from outside the tavern.

Quote from: Cind on April 12, 2019, 02:07:22 AM
I'm sorry, maybe I play the wrong sort of characters, but what kind of utilization does advanced and master watch have for a heavy fighting class?

Let's you mind stance changes, is used vs people you're watching trying to hide right in front of you, or noticing trying to backstab/sap/pp you or the person you are guarding, or stealthy activities generally.

Watch is, imo, a cornerstone component, to protecting other pcs. Whilst most think BIG DAMAGE, or the size of their penis, when discussing heavy combat pcs, their real, best utility lies in how effective they can be, at protecting other, softer targets, and controlling the flow of combat, or seizing the initiative before combat even begins.

Listen, watch and scan, should all have a prominent place, in a guardians toolbox. Guard and rescue alone, make you purely reactionary. Watch, listen and scan, give you more opportunities to be proactive, with skills like THREATEN.

Watch the elf who failed to sneak in, master watch + listen + advanced scan beat his hide, and now you can SUBDUE him, or even better THREATEN him, so he has to show himself... as all other actions, cause you to kick his ass, into the stratosphere.

Not everything warrior, has to be about BIG CRITS and MAXIMUM KILL, you know. Tactics and cunning, are just as important, if not more so, than how hard you swing your 2h bitchmaker.