Clear cut numbers for guild improvements.

Started by titansfan, February 25, 2016, 12:41:19 PM

Which guilds need improvement and why? Pick Top Two

Warrior
Merchant
Burglar
Ranger
Assassin
Pickpocket
Magicker (Any)
I honestly think that Warrior and Burglar need the most love. These classes have been dull for a very long time and desperately need loving to make them interesting again.
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I'd much rather some of these guilds get both buffs and nerfs.

I'm of the philosophy that anytime something is taken away, something else should be added, so even though I think ranger is too good and needs some things taken away, I'd only really support that if it also got a buff.

Furthermore I'm of the opinion that every guild should have some unique benefit. It doesn't even need to be a skill (ala Ranger Quit).

Given that, I'm going to say everyone deserves a buff of some sort, even the guilds that also deserve to be nerfed.

I don't like to use the words "buff"  or "nerf" when discussing changes to guilds because it carries the connotation of MMO class balance or something similar, which I don't feel is super comparable to Armageddon guilds.

I voted pickpocket for obvious reasons, namely a ridiculous branching difficulty and very restricted skillset for a mainguild.

I voted magicker because the new rule restricring karma mainguilds to mundane subguilds will drastically cut the versatility of magickers.

but really I think almost every mainguild could use tweaks. Burglars are permanently shitty combatants because they never learn to parry. Assassins have terrible weaknesses in combat from needlessly restrictive weapon skills (really, assassins should be able to get to at least jman in swords, chopping maybe apprentice.) the skillcaps for branched skills for burglars and pickpockets are too low to be useful (poisoning/backstab.)

Warriors are a tough one. they have unique weapon skills but getting them branched is ridiculous to impossible and by then will be even more challenging to learn. Maybe warriors should branch them sooner. THat makes more sense anyway. Get familiar and comfortable with an axe and then learn to use a (redacted), why spend years mastering an axe then switch gears as an old expert suddenly to being totally novice with a new weapon?

MErchants are great. I have no worries there.

RAngers are also great, well known fact, so should likely be changed last.
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Start pick pockets with hide 2016
pls
Just
pls

I chose pickpockets and warriors, but Burglars can easily be on my list too.

Pickpockets and burglars have one skill that makes them unique, and a bunch of other skills that don't help much for their niche of play"stealth", and then a bunch more low-capped skills that are death-bait.

Warriors progress 10 times slower than every other class. You aren't even allowed to skill-bump weapon and combat skills as much as you can other skills for some god forsaken reason. Along with slow progression they're also incredibly narrow in their utility. I'd love if you could bash doors down or kick people off their mounts or something.

I would not mind at ALL if subdue didn't take height/weight into SUCH a high factor, and raised on a slightly higher point rate.

Warriors should be THE. MASTERS. Of close/personal combat. They can bash, they can kick for 'dirty damage', they can wrestle you to the ground...

But only in disarming, a TRUE difficult skill with possible negative returns, is the skill-progression quick enough to feel accomplished.

I used to track failed bashes, and after 40 failed bashes, I only went up in skill-name once. And when I timed the lag for me, and for my opponent, the times were WILDLY off and didn't seem to be based around anything in particular.



I mean, either that, or allow subdue in combat. Still force the weapons drop, but make barehanded warriors a thing. They can disarm you (don't even need to take the weapon DnD style, just disarm) and they can knock you to the ground, but you BOTH have to disengage for them to try and "end" the fight. I would love to see a real warrior/gladiator win a fight because he dazed/knocked out/outsmarted the opponent and got them into a "submission" move. Or, at the least, into a situation where they are helpless and can be reasoned with/talked to/etc.
Quote from: IAmJacksOpinion on May 20, 2013, 11:16:52 PM
Masks are the Armageddon equivalent of Ed Hardy shirts.

burglars and pick pockets. Or to be exact just plain burglars.

Pickpockets are okey as a stand alone guild, but burglars are horrible. I think burglars and pickpockets should be combined into one guild. It's fine that it's difficult to branch. It's fine if one would require immensely long time to start being able to pick locks. It's fine that it'd be dangerous to practice. As long as it's the rate of progression feels logical to happen naturally.

All other guilds are fine. I wouldnt mind if warriors got bandage earlier though. But not high ride and definitely not scan/hunt.

If you give warriors good ride give rangers okay disarm pls

agility should factor more into subdue IF the opponent is NOT huge or very strong.

IF your agility is shit and your opponent is fast, subduing them should be really hard.

If your agility is great but your opponent is huge and beefy, then you should have a hard time subduing them.

This would nerf half giants current ability to subdue anyone, anytime. (they should still be good at it).

this is a derail but there are too many active threads now anyway and this is a guild balance related topic.
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February 25, 2016, 08:18:43 PM #10 Last Edit: February 25, 2016, 08:37:56 PM by Kryos
Rather than looking at a skill review, I'm going to focus on the classes themselves.  Perhaps a different topic for skill reviews would be a better course to keep things clearer here. As for classes, I know three the best:  Warrior, Ranger, Assassin.

Caveat:  my opinions.  But I do play these classes *a lot*.

The brass tax on warriors, outside considerations of intangibles that do not relate to class?  No scan, weaker ride, no movement utility skills, and no tertiary conflict skills means they are very ineffective in many PvP situations.  Assassins, pick pockets, burglars, rangers, and even some non mundane guilds all have means of turning utterly invisible to a warrior, and for reasons that are best left in that other thread on skills, non main guild scan means they are still invisible even with other options open.  Warriors are the gods of PvNPC, however, if said NPC must me meleed.  No scan/movement utility can now be fixed by sub guild options that opens up the many ways they were kept out of PvNPC too.  But is it well enough?

The trade off for all these openings is the possession of absolute weapon skill mastery, including means to acquire some others can't and the secondary skills related to melee fighting.  But the reality was (things in this respect are changing as per other threads) that these other skills were a pipe dream.  Gaining any level of competency in them required a dedication to very grindy and some perhaps some mandated twinkery.  Is the ability to possess a hard to acquire skill at middling level worth giving up all forms of utility and choice on how to engage?  I do not think so.

Put simply, out of the city rangers outstrip them at most of the same functionality by doing things safer and better, in the city assassins outstrip them similarly.  Warriors are not feeble, but the avenues in which they can confront you are . . . 1.  Walk up and knock you down/grab you to try and smash your face in.  Those who can avoid that avenue have a massive advantage over them, and many, many do.  If a mob of things rush you though, the warrior will shine.

Assassins are better in my opinion then some of what I've read here.  They do not need love in their combat functionality, put perhaps in evaluation of a particular branching skill that is possessed by more than the assassin.  Its their utility suite that could maybe use some bolstering(aside from sneak/hide).

Rangers need little in terms of adjustment.


Give warriors a chance to knock a charging ranger off their mount?

Maybe make it so that warriors don't receive penalties to fighting outnumbered until there are more than three opponents?
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Quote from: Dan on February 25, 2016, 09:41:08 PM
Give warriors a chance to knock a charging ranger off their mount?

Maybe make it so that warriors don't receive penalties to fighting outnumbered until there are more than three opponents?

I would give so many skulls for either of these.

Pickpocket, because everyone who's played them has stated that they could use some improvement (even people who love playing them, which are few and far between).
Also picked mages (any) because the (any) for me is sorcerers, that I still want returned to their rightful glory.
Talia said: Notice to all: Do not mess with Lizzie's GDB. She will cut you.
Delirium said: Notice to all: do not mess with Lizzie's soap. She will cut you.

Quote from: Lizzie on February 26, 2016, 07:06:49 AM
Pickpocket, because everyone who's played them has stated that they could use some improvement (even people who love playing them, which are few and far between).
Also picked mages (any) because the (any) for me is sorcerers, that I still want returned to their rightful glory.


Did you hear that the sorc subguilds had their skills doubled?

I tried selecting pickpocket twice but it wouldn't let me :(
"When I was a fighting man, the kettle-drums they beat;
The people scattered gold-dust before my horse's feet;
But now I am a great king, the people hound my track
With poison in my wine-cup, and daggers at my back."

Warrior (only things you can really play skill-up with are combat-related) and magicker (I feel that each type needs a couple of mundane skills to add a bit more pep in their step.)

I can't speak for pickpocket because I haven't had one since the boost in initial steal skill was rolled in.

I think the major problem with pickpocket is that the weight of items factors greatly into how likely you are to fail, but it isn't always obvious which items weigh more than others...and if an item is like 6 stones (which I think is about the most you can even attempt to steal), it doesn't give you any sort of warning like..."Hey, even though you're a master of thieving, you're about to try to jack a longknife that even a master would think twice about."

That's how my last pickpocket died...even with (master) steal, I stupidly crit-failed an ordinary-looking thing that happened to be heavier than I would've guessed, right next to a HG soldier, and the PC templar who showed up just didn't feel like playing nice that day, even though I did all the right things and was clanned.

Man, that PC was fun, though.  Pretty funny when you can craft knives and sell them multiple times by stealing them back later.  :D
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Pickpockets. Twice. They have fewer skills than any other mundane guild, their branch order is completely fucked, and they're good at doing one thing and one thing only, killin' nahtzees where as all other mundane guilds have some secondary usefulness.

Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy playing them, but you can easily branch all their skills by 5 days played and then there's just nowhere to go from there...
Quote from: musashiengaging in autoerotic asphyxiation is no excuse for sloppy grammer!!!

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Pickpockets need the most help.
Followed by Burglars.
Followed by Drovians.

Warriors have it far better than PPs and Burgs, and all the other Magicker guilds have it far better than Drovians.
The figure in a dark hooded cloak says in rinthi-accented Sirihish, 'Winrothol Tor Fale?'

Quote from: Incognito on March 01, 2016, 11:32:30 AM
Pickpockets need the most help.
Followed by Burglars.
Followed by Drovians.

Warriors have it far better than PPs and Burgs, and all the other Magicker guilds have it far better than Drovians.

I had a pretty nasty Drovian. Not sure what kind of help they need when you get creative with them.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

I think drovs could use 2-3 more utility spells. By all rights they should be one of the most unique classes, but their abilities do seem somewhat limited and have plenty of overlap with others.

March 01, 2016, 11:59:58 AM #22 Last Edit: March 01, 2016, 12:03:07 PM by hyzhenhok
Warriors are fine if you consider their max potential, the problem is the difficulty of achieving that potential is way out of step with every other guild in the game, magickal or not. Fix that and you fix the warrior guild. I don't even so much mind the idea that it takes 50 days to get a warrior maxed; the problem is that a lot of warriors might get past 50 days and still not be anywhere near maxed. See related thread on weapon skill revamps.

The other obvious outlier is the way the assassin, burglar and pickpocket crowd each other out in the same area of expertise, with way too much skill overlap and not enough to distinguish them. I know in the "main guild revamp" thread I've played devil's advocate and suggested seriously just merging them all, but I'd probably be happier with some additions to burglar and pickpocket that make them more unique and less bad assassins with a PvP griefing skill attached.

A quote from teamspeak
"I had a 120+ day warrior with journeymen slashing"
Or something along those lines.
Why is this a thing
Assuming he actively murdered shit and what not.

I don't get why a staffer wouldn't notice something liek that... and just bump the dudes skills up every once in a while.

Quote from: IAmJacksOpinion on March 01, 2016, 11:26:41 AM


Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy playing them, but you can easily branch all their skills by 5 days played and then there's just nowhere to go from there...

That's actually one of my favorite things about them. Five days on the character and now you've no reason to grind for the rest of your life. It's nice to have a non-magick guild that's like that.

That said, I'm not averse to new skills. I just like that there's one mundane class without a huge and hard to get to branch tree.

March 01, 2016, 02:36:43 PM #26 Last Edit: March 01, 2016, 02:40:22 PM by BadSkeelz
Quote from: Jihelu on March 01, 2016, 12:32:00 PM
A quote from teamspeak
"I had a 120+ day warrior with journeymen slashing"
Or something along those lines.
Why is this a thing
Assuming he actively murdered shit and what not.
Quote from: RogueGunslinger on March 01, 2016, 12:38:58 PM
I don't get why a staffer wouldn't notice something liek that... and just bump the dudes skills up every once in a while.

Well they were going to let me write a book on swirdnabsuo but I never got around to doing it before he died.

Between the poor wisdom and newbie mistakes (like excessive boxing so as not to massacre newer PCs, not knowing where to patrol/disregarding certain parts of the game world because it made no sense to go there, etc.), that PC's skill progression was all sorts of fucked up. Took 70 days played to get to advanced two-hand.