Main Guild Discussion

[evilcabbage]

i like that idea.

[Jihelu]

Can we also make spell-cast leveling actually dangerous? I take more damage raising Ride from journeyman to advanced than people do fully branching a magicker.

100% for this.  Removing "nil" as a starting reach for magickers is something I've always supported.

Who do I train fireball on then

[evilcabbage]

Can we also make spell-cast leveling actually dangerous? I take more damage raising Ride from journeyman to advanced than people do fully branching a magicker.

100% for this.  Removing "nil" as a starting reach for magickers is something I've always supported.

Who do I train fireball on then

cast 'mon un fireball' self

[Delirium]

... nevermind. It's pointless to argue and I'm grouchy. I'll just say that if it's a case of fighting prowess, a warrior is still king.

The problem is the limited and boring skillset a warrior has. The limited and boring skillset a pickpocket has.

The fact that skills like climb should be accessible by all guilds without needing to sacrifice a subguild.

The fact that 90% of the reason to even be a ranger isn't their well-balanced skillset, it's their ability to wilderness quit.

I really hate seeing Armageddon stuck in a reductionist trend of thought.

[The Silence of the Erdlus]

An 'aide' or 'commoner' guild that I would play forever---

starts with
cooking to master
watch to advanced
listen to master
sleight of hand to apprentice
scan to apprentice

branching gets...
stonecrafting to master
clayworking to master
floristry to master
sneak to apprentice
hide to apprentice
climb to journeyman (for those who walk the rooftops)

[The Silence of the Erdlus]

Because while its still thematic for merchants to get to mastercraft I feel it is limiting to have them be 92% of those who are capable of mastercrafting.

[Jihelu]

rangers need their melee combat abilities toned -down-, at least a bit.

Pls
no



If they do and they raised parry tho I'd be fine with that.

[Jihelu]

The fact you canCAN NOT (I put can in my original i sowwy) make master bows without being a merchant makes me want to kill la kill my self (Not really)
Give ranger or archer or burglar master bow making.
Pls.
And no merchant /archer subguild cause thats bad.

[evilcabbage]

raised parry to master that it already basically gets?

bah.

they need a reduction. not a big one. but they're quite literally the warriors of the desert, in nearly every sense of the word. they don't need that impressive melee prowess when they have the deadliest aim in the world.

[Delirium]

You all maybe have been running into ranger protectors, because a maxed ranger/anythingelse is still weaker by far than a halfway skilled warrior in combat.

Ranger protecters are lacking several tactical combat skills that warriors get.

You are all so hung up on the fact that a ranger can maybe actually fight some dangerous beasties in the wild that you're forgetting that it'd be more fun to give warriors and rogue guilds more flavor.

Eh....

itstimetostopposting.gif

I'm out.

[Jihelu]

Their lack of disarm/bash easily makes up for it I'd say.
Just don't mention charge or trample.


I'd like to see pickpockets get completely re worked.
The whole argument I've seen since I've started this game of "Lets just throw assassin/burglar/pickpocket together"

I'd really like to see burglar/pickpocket linked and have it be some stupid shit like "Alley man/woman/fuck" where you lose throwing but get decent poison and backstab with all the other shit so you can effectively own a city.

[wizturbo]

The problem is the limited and boring skillset a warrior has. The limited and boring skillset a pickpocket has.

I agree with you there.  All of my suggestions were assuming very little if any new coding of skills (the assassins one would obviously.. I was on the fence about posting it at all because of that).

If skills were made to do more interesting things, Ranger wouldn't seem so good in comparison.  Although I'd say that pickpockets got quite a bit of love with the sleight of hand changes...so not sure I'd use them as an example of boring skillset...limited yes...boring no.

[Jihelu]

I think warriors have plenty of room for 'fun' but your level of fun has to just be hitting things at a very good rate and having good combat skills.
I mean
Their skinning is okay I guess

[wizturbo]

Can we also make spell-cast leveling actually dangerous? I take more damage raising Ride from journeyman to advanced than people do fully branching a magicker.

100% for this.  Removing "nil" as a starting reach for magickers is something I've always supported.

Who do I train fireball on then

cast 'mon un fireball' self

Go hunt like everyone else.  Or find a fellow magicker who can protect themselves against you to give you the chance to practice.

I'd also like to amend and highlight my statement and say remove "nil" as a starting reach for elementalists.  Sorcerers keeping nil is okay to me...gives them a better chance of laying low.  Also note I said starting reach... I didn't say remove the reach from the game.

It makes sense to me that a new elementalist might not know how to control their magicks yet, and would require some tutelage in order to do so...

[shadeoux]

Some ideas I would like to see, is more variety in what skills you can get in the major classes.
I.E.
Mundanes:
Warriors start with Advanced weapons but lower the exceptionally large benefits from Advanced weapons.
Rangers that -can- eventually after mastering melee weapon lines can get advanced weapons but capped at journeyman or something similar.
Assassins - Bring back traps please but not explosive ones, perhaps needles and springs or sinew...
Merchants - More MC's per month since this is what the class specializes in.
Burgs/PP - Bundle, yes please into a single Rogue class.

Elementalists -
A negative growth of mana regen if in opposite sphere of the spectrum. Drov in daylight, or Krathi in darkness.

More freedoms for employment, the Viv's it says in the docs are sought for their abilities, but in the last
ten years I've seen one employed that followed the docs inside the city.

Quasi-Elemental Guilds,
Those that would/could relate to two attunments, something like a Whiran/Elkro or Viv/Ruk where you get some benefits from both spheres but not all them....

Elementalist Subguilds for all classes that are not Sorcerer related.

sorry at work, just rambling. But I'll write more when I can think straight.

[evilcabbage]

ranger getting advanced weapons - nope nope nope nope nope

why

why even suggest that.

rangers already are literally the best at every single thing they want to do.

they do not need even more advantages.

absolutely not.

and why lower the benefits to advanced weapons? they're advanced for a reason. they're supposed to be exceptional tools that are situationally powerful.

[Large Hero]

This doesn't really contribute to the discussion, but my head is exploding with excitement over this. Thank you, staff, for earnestly looking at design/balance issues. Regardless of how the changes turn out, thank you.

and why lower the benefits to advanced weapons? they're advanced for a reason. they're supposed to be exceptional tools that are situationally powerful.

I was going to get into a discussion about advanced weapon balance, but then realized it wasn't germane to the thread.

[Jihelu]

Getting an advanced weapon to J-man would probably just suck ass.
Cause after getting your normal weapons to master to get it, the warriors (If they started with it in your idea) will probably have all of their fancy weapon skills to levels higher than yours.
You're better off just hitting them with a poisoned dagger or getting that good shit poisoned arrow

[Sunburned]

Ranger and Warrior are already well distanced on the combat potential continuum to accommodate a multitude of guild-blending subguilds. That is to say - a ranger/protector or aggressor should be much closer to the capabilities of a warrior than a more utility-focused pairing, such as a ranger/crafter.

Having played primarily warriors for years, I've never felt threatened by a ranger in melee combat, and those that are dangerous achieved this did so primarily through any combination of strategic utility/being exceptional long lived/having stupidly strong stats.  

The only real change to the mean combat potential of warriors relative to rangers is that they should all be able to achieve no-handed ride, and advanced weapon skills should become more accessible; having well-developed one myself, the advantage they yield for the required duration of work is simply incomparably hard compared to other guild-specific advantages.

[BadSkeelz]

Rangers only seem over-powered in melee compared to warriors in large part because the warrior "special ability" of Advanced Weapon Skills is a non-factor for 99.9% of warriors. Warriors have a trump card, it just can't get played a lot. Warriors are supposed to get higher and better weapon skills, but they don't because doing so is almost impossible for anything but the most code savvy and dedicated of players. This leads to your average Warrior and Ranger both capping out at similar offensive and defense abilities in melee. Add in the ranger bonuses to ride, to archery, to brewing, perception skills etc. etc. and you begin to see why people say they're overpowered.

A newbie warrior will kick the shit out of a newbie ranger. (Possibly literally, as warriors can kick.) A 20 day warrior will beat a 20 day ranger in a straight fight. But by then, rangers should be having access to abilities that'll let them avoid that fight and engage Warriors where the warrior has much more limited counters. Warriors should at some point get advanced weapon skills, but they don't. Barring a few skills that branch off of much easier ones to level up than Weapon Skills, what you see when you make a warrior is what you get.

Rangers vs Warriors is a false dichotomy. Rangers can do more things than a warrior. Those things they can both do, rangers only appear to do better in practice because warriors cannot easily break in to their next tier of ability.

Edit: It isn't that Rangers can do to much. It's that Warriors (And other guilds) cannot do enough.

[Jihelu]

A solution is simple.
Either speed up a warriors scaling or perhaps make it so they can branch advanced weapons on both success and failure, not sure how that would work.
Or slow a ranger down.
I'd rather the first.

[BadSkeelz]

... nevermind. It's pointless to argue and I'm grouchy. I'll just say that if it's a case of fighting prowess, a warrior is still king.

The problem is the limited and boring skillset a warrior has. The limited and boring skillset a pickpocket has.

The fact that skills like climb should be accessible by all guilds without needing to sacrifice a subguild.

The fact that 90% of the reason to even be a ranger isn't their well-balanced skillset, it's their ability to wilderness quit.

I really hate seeing Armageddon stuck in a reductionist trend of thought.

Just going on record that I agree with everything Delirium's said here. Especially regarding Rangers. They don't need hate, other guilds need love.

(Except magickers. Mraaagh.  )

[Patuk]

After some teamspeak-fueled brainstorming, Saellyn and I came up with the following stealth fix:

Stealth nerf: If you watch some other person, you should be able to completely nullify any attempts at hide and other covert skills.

Stealth buff: HOWEVER, if said person leaves the room/your line of sight, the watch gets broken instantly.

Alternative buff: Watch gets a delay just as listen and scan do. Characters stay on the lookout for sneaky sorts for a while after they slip away, but not too long.

This is aimed at no guild in particular, but watch staying up indefinetly makes any stealthy person's job a lot harder in (imo) artifical ways.

[JackGibbons]

I'm pretty new here (about 100 cumulative days played, and only warrior/ranger), but I have to say that Ranger is a lot of fun with all of its utility. Warrior feels rather bland by comparison. I'm not sure I understand any desires to gimp this experience. Does it stem from being annoyed with facing rangers in pvp? I've done almost none of that, so it skews my view, a bit. But I'd say that I'm with Delerium and BadSkeelz in that rather than make rangers suck more, frustrating those who love this class, instead the other guilds can be improved in ways that make them more interesting to play. I think the recent code changes to combat skill gains should help with warriors not being as strong as they could be, and the implications of that have yet to permeate everyone's lived experience of the difference between classes. Rangers had the option to attend Turaal/Lizard University, while a lot of warriors did things like AoD, Byn, etc where sparring was the main weapons skill use. My understanding of those changes is that they will help raise lower skilled characters up to the level of the top sparring opponents faster, which will give the top sparring opponents an equal challenge in a more timely manner, permitting them to squeak forward towards the top of their skill charts as well.

Also, I was excited by the (E)SG changes and thought they were interesting, so I'm pretty hopeful that the changes we'll be seeing should help make all guilds more fun and interesting, rather than just dragging one down.

the hope is that the changes actually make them better

[LauraMars]

So there's now two threads about this. Should I just merge them? We don't really need two threads that are discussing the same exact thing.