Should PCs be able to start as 'experienced'?

[Potaje]

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.

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.

I feel what your sayin, but honestly the boosts are already there, you just got to choose the right combinations of race and prime/secondary guilds. Mix and match then you will stumble upon it, but of coarse you will have to sacrifice one aspect for another, which I think is fair.

and i could swer Staff has posted about boosts and not giving them out, or accepting apps of it.. but maybe that was only stats.

[Qzzrbl]

I'd like something like this to be based off of a combination of age and karma, or a "veteran" subguild or somesuch.

Buuut, that's just me. I'm weak.

I don't like grinding for 10+ days just to be able to sneak with -any- degree of success.

[spawnloser]

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

In the case of this suggestion, no, I am only the voice of negativity because I think it is a poor one from the ground up.  I think it is, as I said, unfair to new players.  The grind, as suggested, isn't as bad as some people try to make it out to be.

[Synthesis]

If the grind isn't that bad, how unfair could the idea possibly be?

That's the sound of cognitive dissonance, in case you were wondering.

[Myrdryn]

Should PCs be able to start as 'experienced'?

Only if they are named Jimi.

[Twilight]

Special Application:

Name: Jimi
Sdesc: the dreadlocked, long-fingered elf

Guild:  Assassin
Subguild:  Bard

What I want:  Jimi is "experienced".  Please set his assassin skills to 50% of max, or 40 days, whichever is higher.  Please set his Bard type skills to 100% across the board.  Being "experienced", Jimi should be set permanently with hallucinations, ala skellebain.  A way to load infinate edible skellebain tablets would also be nice.


Errrr...not to derail, but characters getting significant bumps to starting skills (other than sponsored) the sorts of which some of the people in this thread have talked about, should get a -serious- detriment as well.  This is a game about conflict.  I can't see how people could advocate coming in routinely with a "20 day" character (whatever that really means skillwise) and then engage in conflict with people who did not get that opportunity, when lots of times conflict comes down to those skills.  The point of skill progression (and really, even social position power) is that you have to survive the different sorts of conflict in this game (PC, NPC, combat, political, etc), and not everyone survives.

[Lizzie]

Not only that, but I thought skill branching is closely linked to skill training. So you're talking about completely reworking the skill tree system. Let's say I have a pen-making character. I ask for "nib-cutting" to be set at a 10% boost up from noob level. Great! I got the boost. Except, "ink-making" branches once you hit 12%. So I'm not just getting a boost to nib-cutting. I'm also getting ink-making at a much faster rate, without having to do hardly any of the work, than someone who didn't ask for that boost. And since ink-making branches poison-ink-squirting, I can become a master assassin a whole lot faster than any of y'all who didn't know which skills branch from which other skills. This is where it all turns into min-maxing, and this is where the game stops being a RPI and reverts back to the Diku H&S it came from.

It's already at the point where people have spreadsheets and formulae detailing which skills branch from what, and when exactly that happens, and what exactly is the minimum required to get there at the most efficient rate. I would prefer to -not- encourage this kind of thought process. Giving people the opportunity to start out better at chosen skills is too much of an encouragement to min-max, and not enough encouragement to learn how to enjoy discovery.

[number13]

I can't see how people could advocate coming in routinely with a "20 day" character (whatever that really means skillwise)

I'm advocating coming in with a 5 day character, with some basic skills trained, not a 20 day combat monster.

A more elegant solution would be a system that assumes success of most uncontested actions (as brew does currently) with a shallower power-curve, such that the differences between a 5-day and 20-day character would be noticeable but not extreme.

The point of skill progression...

The point of grind is to extend content.  It isn't easy for a MUD or MMO to create a novel situation for a player for every hour of play, so repetitive tasks are rewarded.  Because this is a permadeath game, time spent also creates a risk. You'll lose 240 hours of progress if you lose your 10-day character.  This is not a bad thing -- the sense of risk is part of what makes Arm exciting.  However, we're talking about 240 hours here, for a modest 10-day character.  It's not really inline with the number of hours of 'work' required to enjoy the interesting bits of more modern games.

Problems here is that repeated activities are braindead simple. As others have indicated, it's pretty easy, though time consuming, to get your character skilled up.  But an easy game isn't necessarily a fun one, or everyone would be hopelessly enthralled by Tic-Tac-Toe. In essence, you have to play a minigame you've played literally a few thousand times before in order to participate fully in the interesting, exciting bits.

Apparently not too many other players of this game, or the 10 million subscribers of WoW for that matter, consider the above to be problematic. *welp*  

[FantasyWriter]

Make a subguild "veteran" that doesn't give any extra skills, but gives a like a.... +5% to group of selected starting skills dependent on the guild?  Mundane only.

[Synthesis]

I know I've posted about why the "veteran" subguild would be a silly idea.

Here's the nutshell:

1. If you gave a high percentage boost, people would cry about newbie characters coming in too powerful.

2. If you gave a low percentage boost, people would soon realize that it wasn't worth taking it, because it's the upper-middle range of skill progression that is difficult to get through, not that initial 5, 10, or even 20 percent.

If it were set at around 10% to all starting skills, newbie Armageddon players might use it.  I'd bet that most veteran players wouldn't start using a veteran subguild until it were set around 25-30%.

That being said, I wouldn't necessarily be against it.  There are plenty of subguilds I never use because they're mostly useless, and this would be one of them.

However, I'd much prefer a karma-linked system.  If you have enough karma to play a half-giant or a mul, there is no reason you shouldn't be able to start with the equivalent of a 10 or 15 day character, because a half-giant warrior right out of the box can probably kill any 15-day mundane character with less than three attacks.  It's assumed that high-karma players are responsible enough to handle this sort of thing without breaking the game.

If newbie players don't like it, they can special app for karma levels and prove themselves worthy.  Every one of us veteran players had to do exactly the same thing, so it isn't unfair at all.  It's simply a matter of proving to the staff that you are just as interested in maintaining the quality and atmosphere of the game as they are.

[Spoon]

I'm not into the idea of a karma-based system. The karma system already has its flaws (people being missed), but what's great about the karma system is all those roles require playing the game from a very different angle, which restrict the powerful classes (in an awesome cage of RP). If someone can just go and create a master warrior, it's just jumping the que. They can create any concept they like, without having to put the work in. If I was a new player and I saw this system in place, I wouldn't stick around for very long.

As for the skill grind as it's called, I think this really helps people snap out of their previous role. Somehow I have a feeling that if people could skip this there might be one or two instances of revenge within 24 hours for a dead character.

[Salt Merchant]

That being said, I wouldn't necessarily be against it.  There are plenty of subguilds I never use because they're mostly useless, and this would be one of them.

You need to remember that just because you might find it useless doesn't mean that others would. One man's garbage is another man's treasure and all that.

I figure it would be worth it just to be able to create a warrior character with a background of having fought in the past that doesn't totally get his ass kicked first round in the Byn. Or a pickpocket that can actually begin to exercise his craft without all the crap that comes from starting being utterly hopeless at it. Etc.

To whoever said you should just special app: special apps should be for special characters, not marginally adjusted characters, given how laborious the process is.

[Synthesis]

That being said, I wouldn't necessarily be against it.  There are plenty of subguilds I never use because they're mostly useless, and this would be one of them.

You need to remember that just because you might find it useless doesn't mean that others would. One man's garbage is another man's treasure and all that.

That's why I said I'm not against the idea.  I simply think the "starting experienced" idea is better served by optional karma-related bonuses overall.

In a nutshell:  the subclass is a fine idea, but it doesn't really go far enough to address the problem.  Then again, I don't really see it as a terrible problem, either.

I suppose I'd have to say that, if you think it's a problem worth fixing, karma-based bonuses is really the way to go.

[Saellyn]

Something about special apping Karma

You can special app for Karma points?

[RogueGunslinger]

Something about special apping Karma

You can special app for Karma points?

IF you think you can play a karma role resposibly, spec app it and if you do well you'll probably get the karma level for it.

[roughneck]

Once anybody gets the karma to start characters with higher skills I can't see them ever starting a character at a base level.  I know I never would.  Maybe that's a problem, maybe it's not, I don't know.

Either way, by the time you've played long enough to have karma skills aren't going to slow you down too much because you know just what a new character is capable of and how to get their skills up efficiently.

If something like this was implemented I'd like to see it go to new accounts.  Give the poor bastards a hand up to help the learning curve out.

[A Dry, Quiet War]

Either way, by the time you've played long enough to have karma skills aren't going to slow you down too much because you know just what a new character is capable of and how to get their skills up efficiently.

Experience helps.  But if you play 20 days a year, period, you're plain and simple going to spend a large fraction of your time with low-skilled PCs.

A karma-restricted subguild roughly equivalent to ten days play time is something I would use...sometimes.

[roughneck]

A karma-restricted subguild roughly equivalent to ten days play time is something I would use...sometimes.

I think most people would use it 100% of the time.  Simply because if you had the option, why wouldn't you?

[AmandaGreathouse]

A karma-restricted subguild roughly equivalent to ten days play time is something I would use...sometimes.

I think most people would use it 100% of the time.  Simply because if you had the option, why wouldn't you?

You might want to supplement the skills of your guild with a subguild? Such as a ranger/tailor or mage/scavenger, assassin/physician or a warrior/hunter etc etc etc.

[Thunkkin]

I think it would be great for new players and handy for those folks who play character concepts that only last a day or two.

As for what more experienced players would do ... I would personally never use it.  A short-term starting boost pales in comparison to skills that might add new possibilities for play and survival months down the road.

[AmandaGreathouse]

I think it would be great for new players and handy for those folks who play character concepts that only last a day or two.

As for what more experienced players would do ... I would personally never use it.  A short-term starting boost pales in comparison to skills that might add new possibilities for play and survival months down the road.

my thoughts exactly. though it does of course offer a good option for those who'd be willing to sacrifice one for the other. (IMHO)

[spawnloser]

A karma-restricted subguild roughly equivalent to ten days play time is something I would use...sometimes.

I think most people would use it 100% of the time.  Simply because if you had the option, why wouldn't you?

As Amanda said, the grind isn't too bad and I would rather have the supplemental skills than having a piddly boost, because that's all this could give.

[Spider]

I think it would be fine if there was no possibility of growth beyond that point. Fine, your grizzled warrior is a grizzled warrior, and that's all they will ever be.

Save the excellence for those who are willing to take a PC and grow skill wise with them from the ground up.

My vote was save them for the special apps. That limits accounts to having at most three boosted PC's per year. I think that is a perfect enough limitation as is.

Karma players getting any more goodies, such as complete rule over the mundane world, makes me cringe.

[Sephiroto]

What if the experienced started with 0 coins, no food, no water, a loincloth, and a skinning knife (or maybe 200 coins for a merchant)?  Okay, so maybe not that bad, but you get where I'm going with this idea.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

I like the idea of using karma and age both to determine starting skills. With each karma level, you might have the choice to gain x amount of across the board skill, but you would have to be x age. So the more skill you wanted, the more age you would have to accept. Thusly, a person with an 8 karma boost would be accepting the dip in stats that comes with being 50-60 years old, or the eqivilant per race.

That seems the most fair. I don't see it as being unfair in any scenario, but ... this makes it a double edged sword. I hate the grind, myself.