Should PCs be able to start as 'experienced'?

[Marc]

Eh, whats fair got to do with it?  We play roles.  These roles are not intended to be equal.  If they were we would not have social castes, muls, magickers etc.  You still have to get through chargen.  Your character still has to be approved and if you abuse the power your karma grants, you lose it and possibly more.

That's the same with karma races, gickers, templars, nobles.  Everything.

I don't personally think tossing a 40 day skilled warrior is any more abusable than a newbie psion or mul.  So long as they receive the same oversight.  The grind DOES get old.  It may be easy, but it is still time consuming and many roles require some level of competence.

[Sephiroto]

Furthermore, that sort of reward serves to positively reinforce proper roleplay, OOC, and GDB conduct.

I also realized that it would almost certainly help keep mundane numbers high by giving us more incentive to choose the base classes with boosts over a no-boost magicker or karma race.  I'd be much more likely to play a human warrior or pickpocket over a whiran or drovian if I didn't always have to start at the minimum skill level.

[AmandaGreathouse]

I like the idea of having skills based on age. Much like stats are.

You're still going to have people who like playing people young and choose to do so (they do so now). Plus, it would allow for new players to have the same advantages that karma players have. And it's not only that, but if a small boost was given to the starting skills for all guilds, there would be less of a 'grind', period.

I don't know. I get aggravated by the 'grind' also, but so long as a skill branching system is set up, I see it being an issue. I think it might be better if perhaps skills stayed where they were, but skills you branch were started at, say, 1% and made harder to get up, that would allow people to have only moderate skill at various things and you wouldn't see people who purposely skill certain things up to branch other things. I don't know, that's just my thoughts.

[Ampere]

I like the idea of having skills based on age. Much like stats are.

You're still going to have people who like playing people young and choose to do so (they do so now). Plus, it would allow for new players to have the same advantages that karma players have. And it's not only that, but if a small boost was given to the starting skills for all guilds, there would be less of a 'grind', period.

I don't know. I get aggravated by the 'grind' also, but so long as a skill branching system is set up, I see it being an issue. I think it might be better if perhaps skills stayed where they were, but skills you branch were started at, say, 1% and made harder to get up, that would allow people to have only moderate skill at various things and you wouldn't see people who purposely skill certain things up to branch other things. I don't know, that's just my thoughts.

No. Skill is the product of a person's motivation to actually learn and improve. I've met plenty of old people in the same field as me, who I would consider intelligent at the bar, yet simply had no interest in bettering themselves.  The stat adjustment are biological, skills are learned.

Karma/Special App.  Or nothing.

[Kastion]

If anyone got to start a character with the equivalent of a 40 day char in skills because of Karma, I would straight up quit this game and so would alot of other people that havent played for 10 years. So do whatever.

[Kryos]

In short, I agree with the majority of voters at the time of this posting:  leave things the way they are.  If you're worried about your skills, and how skilled your PC is, you're probably going about things wrong in the first place.

[Old Kank]

If anyone got to start a character with the equivalent of a 40 day char in skills because of Karma, I would straight up quit this game and so would alot of other people that havent played for 10 years. So do whatever.

I don't think anyone has been advocating a boost equivalent to 40 days of playing time, but... why would you quit?  This game isn't about fairness or balance.  How would it change your enjoyment of the game?

[jcarter]

If anyone got to start a character with the equivalent of a 40 day char in skills because of Karma, I would straight up quit this game and so would alot of other people that havent played for 10 years. So do whatever.

I don't think anyone has been advocating a boost equivalent to 40 days of playing time, but... why would you quit?  This game isn't about fairness or balance.  How would it change your enjoyment of the game?

The game is already stacked up against new players, due to the secretive nature of IC information and knowledge of the code that comes with experience. Having players being able to roll up characters with much more "time" put into them straight out of chargen just makes things come across almost as an old boy's club type of thing. The fact that it'll take a new player years to attain that amount of karma is just ridiculous.

I just don't see this as anything meaningful whatsoever to the game. Yeah, it sucks when you play another warrior after your uber one got killed. Oh well. That comes with the turf of perma-death. Armageddon isn't about badass characters with max skills fighting off the new evil NPC of the week. It's a player-driven gave that focuses on plotting, betrayal, intrigue, and struggling to stay alive.

[Jingo]

I don't know why people are so upset about the "grind."  Skilling up on Arm is so ridiculously easy if you don't intentionally put obstacles in front of yourself.

It's more to do with the timesink required to become reasonably competant. That's usually the primary factor, even in mmo's.

I can spend eight days (re: 200 hours) on a character, just doing my thing (which includes regular training) and that character still won't be good enough to survive some of the random critters in the wastes.

I can do this with one character, two characters, by the third, it becomes too much effort by the third.

---

Anyways, here is a my suggestion.

How about an overall starting boost to combat skills? That way we could reasonably put down a skeet or a vestric without losing a limb in the process.

As it is right now, playing a one to three day hunter is an excerise in pain.

[Kastion]

If anyone got to start a character with the equivalent of a 40 day char in skills because of Karma, I would straight up quit this game and so would alot of other people that havent played for 10 years. So do whatever.

I don't think anyone has been advocating a boost equivalent to 40 days of playing time, but... why would you quit?  This game isn't about fairness or balance.  How would it change your enjoyment of the game?

they were talking about it earlier in the post. I know the game is about RP and not about fairness or balance. But those are taken care of IG with social castes, prejudice against races stuff like that. Making it to where someone who has played for 8 years in r/l can just roll up a character that is uber strong is retarded. It waters down perma death which waters down the RP and unfairness and unbalance. They lose their 60 day warrior so they roll up a 40 day assassin and just jump right back into the plots and run the show. That makes it even more retarded for new players who have enough trouble moving up in their guild and getting into the plots and being able to contribute to things (other then being the newbie retard who gets killed or fucks stuff up) Like I said its just a ridiculous OOC way of benifiting the vetrans and ruining everything for the newbies.

[BlackMagic0]

If anyone got to start a character with the equivalent of a 40 day char in skills because of Karma, I would straight up quit this game and so would alot of other people that havent played for 10 years. So do whatever.

I don't think anyone has been advocating a boost equivalent to 40 days of playing time, but... why would you quit?  This game isn't about fairness or balance.  How would it change your enjoyment of the game?

they were talking about it earlier in the post. I know the game is about RP and not about fairness or balance. But those are taken care of IG with social castes, prejudice against races stuff like that. Making it to where someone who has played for 8 years in r/l can just roll up a character that is uber strong is retarded. It waters down perma death which waters down the RP and unfairness and unbalance. They lose their 60 day warrior so they roll up a 40 day assassin and just jump right back into the plots and run the show. That makes it even more retarded for new players who have enough trouble moving up in their guild and getting into the plots and being able to contribute to things (other then being the newbie retard who gets killed or fucks stuff up) Like I said its just a ridiculous OOC way of benifiting the vetrans and ruining everything for the newbies.

Do not worry. Staff will never do it. I am almost 100% positive on that.
Special app for a boost, and even those boost are not nearly to 40days. Not even 10 or 20days.

[number13]

I just don't see this as anything meaningful whatsoever to the game. Yeah, it sucks when you play another warrior after your uber one got killed. Oh well. That comes with the turf of perma-death. Armageddon isn't about badass characters with max skills fighting off the new evil NPC of the week. It's a player-driven gave that focuses on plotting, betrayal, intrigue, and struggling to stay alive.

It's not about owning the evil NPC of the week. I've never been in that position and never will, because repeated sparring sessions is the #1 cause of suicide among my characters.  It's about basic skills (skinning, climb, contact, craft skills, ride, sneak even) and not wanting to grind them up. Again.  For some of these skills, if you don't devote time to grinding them, they will fail the first time you try to use them, and possibly end your character as a result.

The idea of starting off a PC as somewhat experienced is an end-run around the bazillion failures of zero to ten day characters. (5 day character = 120 hours, or about as long as it takes for an average bloke to grind a WoW character from 0 to 80.)  My actual preference would be for a system that assumes success in unopposed situations, rather than failure. The old school direction-sense of rangers and the cure mixing of physicians are examples of skills that assumed success. You got the skinning skill? The gortok gets skinned. You have contact? If there's no barrier or other factor at play, you contact the other bloke. Bandage-making on the skill list? Alright, you make a bandage.

The game's not going to change to remove assumption of failure. It's ingrained into the system and the culture. Next best thing would be a method of skipping past the worst of the carnival of failure. Something with less uncertainty than the special app process would be nice. Bonus points if the system could involve trade-offs, and therefore be available to a person with little to no karma.

[A Dry, Quiet War]

At 2-3 karma, have the option of starting with all your skills at 50%...

...in exchange for never branching anything, ever.

[spawnloser]

At 2-3 karma, have the option of starting with all your skills at 50%...

...in exchange for never branching anything, ever.

I don't think you quite understand how retardedly uber that would be.  No.  Dear god, no.

[A Dry, Quiet War]

5%.  Whatever, man.

[Old Kank]

What if, instead of limiting casting calls for roles to those with blood/family ties, the staff were willing and able to recruit players into 'experienced' characters to fill clan needs.

For instance, what if House Kadius kept a sticky up that looked like this:

Master tailor, northern branch - 20 day merchant (6 karma required)
Commander of the guard, southern branch - 30 day warrior (10 karma required)
Kadian hunter, northern branch - 5 day ranger (2 karma required)

Players with the appropriate karma would apply directly to the clan staff and hopefully get into the role quicker than they would with the special app process, and they would start out with some purpose other than being a certified B.A.M.F.  The staff would have some oversight and there could be various OOC restrictions on the character to keep them in that role and to keep them from abusing that role.  Players would get to skip the skill grind and be better able to take part in the game world, and maybe it would reduce the "too many Indians, not enough chiefs" problem.

Would something like this alleviate some of the anxiety over players playing pre-buffed characters, or would it make problems worse?

[Salt Merchant]

From another thread:

Maybe one subguild choice could just be "extra experience".

This would take the form of modest boosts to a guild's core skills.

[spawnloser]

Staff don't recruit people with a specific guild as a requirement.  They recruit people to play characters that have a certain job.  Your character's guild is not your character's job.  A warrior/hunter or a ranger/guard can both hold the same job.  I don't see your suggestion flying, Old Kank.

[a strange shadow]

So, do you have any suggestions, Spawnloser, or are you only here to be the voice of negativity?

[jhunter]

From another thread:

Maybe one subguild choice could just be "extra experience".

This would take the form of modest boosts to a guild's core skills.

I rather like this idea. Subguild: Veteran. You would give up having an additional skillset in exchange for a boost to your starting skill levels of your main guild. Seems fair to me, it would be accessible for even new players as well. Something like a 5-10% boost maybe.

[Kastion]

From another thread:

Maybe one subguild choice could just be "extra experience".

This would take the form of modest boosts to a guild's core skills.

I rather like this idea. Subguild: Veteran. You would give up having an additional skillset in exchange for a boost to your starting skill levels of your main guild. Seems fair to me, it would be accessible for even new players as well. Something like a 5-10% boost maybe.

I vote on this... Good idea in my opinion

[Majikal]

Definitely the best idea I've heard so far. +1

Not that I think there is anything wrong with the current system, I think something like this would pretty much please everyone and leave no sad faces in the crowd.

[Thunkkin]

Definitely the best idea I've heard so far. +1

Not that I think there is anything wrong with the current system, I think something like this would pretty much please everyone and leave no sad faces in the crowd.

I'm sure there'd be an angry thread if it happened. 

[mattrious]

I'd like it to be based on specific skills and only skills that are on the bottom tier for that guild / sub-guild. For example,

At creation a player rolls up his character and after choosing his guild and sub-guild another selection process is brought up. In this menu are the qualifying starting skills for the guild / sub-guild the player has chosen. The game gives the player the option to enhance one or two of these said skills. Now, there is a caveat and that is - if you do decide to enhance any of these skills, your other skills will start at a lesser % than they normally would. Now, the player is by no means forced to enhance any of these skills and if they choose, can leave them as they would before this option was introduced to the game. Just a thought.

[Reiloth]

Though I get frustrated sometimes when I start a new character at Day 0...I really don't condone any of these ideas.

I definitely don't like the 'Veteran Subguild' or karma-sponsored-guild roles. As spawnloser said, Staff doesn't dictate what your PC will be. They see if your concept fits within their guidelines, and go from there. If you apply to be a psion in that role, it would definitely require greater scrutiny and might be denied flat out due to the amount of psions already out there, the sensitivity of that guild in such a role, etc.

I also think that newbies should be encouraged to start from the ground up. It's a great learning experience. I've been here for close to eight years, and I don't think I would've developed my ability to play this game as well if I had the chance to start as a "Veteran". I stopped making character concepts that were grizzled badasses because I realized that characters start off very weak and incapable for the most part. I would hate to encourage newer players to keep with such concepts, instead of playing the nobody-that-becomes-somebody.