Backstab

[lostinspace]

Yeah, my experience is that sparring your equal isn't really all that helpful, it's sparring people better than you that improves you. And interestingly enough, it just takes 1 person to critter grind and you can have dozens of high skilled PCs result from it. They spar with people, then later those people spar with new players, and so on. By far my strongest character was in a sparring guild full of characters like that, I rocketed up to journeyman so fast I thought it was a bug or something.

[Delirium]

If two people are on an equal threshold, there are still viable options. You just have to be willing to work as a team to train each other.

I hated sparring for the longest time until I figured out how to make it work, heh.

The changes helped, but critter grinding is still an option for those who are unable or unwilling to do the social sparring route.

[Dunetrade55]

There's also been some noticable changes to wisdom, synthesis, that I've been enjoying. Could be my imagination, however. Time will tell.

[Reiloth]

There's also been some noticable changes to wisdom, synthesis, that I've been enjoying. Could be my imagination, however. Time will tell.

Not your imagination. It's a significant improvement.

[Synthesis]

Wisdom doesn't matter if you aren't getting fails.

The crux of the problem is generating failures on the high end.

In the Byn, or most other clans that aren't stacked with critter-grinders, once you get to high jman in a weapon skill, you can literally go RL weeks without ever getting a fail in sparring.

It is IMPOSSIBLE to get your clannies to go along with the training regimen you need to use to artificially generate those failures by creating the perfect set of circumstances.  I know what it is, trust me.  But everyone a) thinks they know better or b) needs to train different things, so they don't want to waste their time with training -your- skills properly.  Also, you cannot coordinate that IC without essentially blowing your cover as one of several knowledgeable GDB personas, and you can't honestly roleplay being a combat-training-master-personal-trainer if your PC is a lousy piece of shit.  I mean, seriously...trying to play that scenario out in my head as a 'rinther just seems ludicrous to me. Even then...once you get not very far beyond high jman, generating failures by the "optimal sparring method," even with a reasonably good partner, starts becoming very rare...and that's just with a single weapon/style, mind you.

I get this feeling that like, most knowledgeable people know how fucking retarded it is, but they kind of keep it under wraps or deny it because it makes it easier to git gud relative to all the scrubs out there who have no idea what they're doing.

[Armaddict]

I get this feeling that like, most knowledgeable people know how fucking retarded it is, but they kind of keep it under wraps or deny it because it makes it easier to git gud relative to all the scrubs out there who have no idea what they're doing.

It really doesn't occur to you that your opinion on the matter could just be different than others who think it's fine and doing what we'd like it to do?  That your endless pursuit of (master) is just completely altogether contrary to mine, where I don't want you to hit (master) by spending time in a safe environment, or that I disagree that it should take less time altogether?

I think that's kind of speaking more out of your ego, to the point that you're casually tossing out a statement that says anyone who disagrees with you is, more than likely, blatantly trying to fuck people over.  I think that's pretty rude on your part.

[Reiloth]

Wisdom doesn't matter if you aren't getting fails.

The crux of the problem is generating failures on the high end.

In the Byn, or most other clans that aren't stacked with critter-grinders, once you get to high jman in a weapon skill, you can literally go RL weeks without ever getting a fail in sparring.

It is IMPOSSIBLE to get your clannies to go along with the training regimen you need to use to artificially generate those failures by creating the perfect set of circumstances.  I know what it is, trust me.  But everyone a) thinks they know better or b) needs to train different things, so they don't want to waste their time with training -your- skills properly.  Also, you cannot coordinate that IC without essentially blowing your cover as one of several knowledgeable GDB personas, and you can't honestly roleplay being a combat-training-master-personal-trainer if your PC is a lousy piece of shit.  I mean, seriously...trying to play that scenario out in my head as a 'rinther just seems ludicrous to me. Even then...once you get not very far beyond high jman, generating failures by the "optimal sparring method," even with a reasonably good partner, starts becoming very rare...and that's just with a single weapon/style, mind you.

I get this feeling that like, most knowledgeable people know how fucking retarded it is, but they kind of keep it under wraps or deny it because it makes it easier to git gud relative to all the scrubs out there who have no idea what they're doing.

It might behoove you to check out the changes posted above made by Nergal. They threw off our crotchety jaded vet calculations a bit. And yes, drastic changes in the 6 months you were gone Synth. Git Gud Bra.

[Dunetrade55]

It occurs to me that that's an exceptional scenario, Synthesis, usually arising after a total party wipe with only a few survivors. I'd say more on the matter but I can't, unfortunately, so I apologize for having to use the line find out IC, if you can. There's been a LOT of tweaks lately and most of us don't really know what half of them are, only hints, and just have to feel it out. The changes as of late have been of staggering proportions, not to mention that there's now a building team and so browsing the markets or typing craft useless.thing is actually an exciting grab bag of results as of late. There's calls going out for submissions of new crafts all the time, so that thing you set a trigger to auto-junk might just be something wickedly cool.

... and there's likely to be more tweaks if the momentum keeps up. For a few years things felt kind of stagnant and bits of code that seemed to be counter-intuitive were just "how it is" and you had to "deal with it". I'm enjoying the changes immensely and perhaps over time these issues that are had with certain skills and guild balance will be adjusted in favorable ways.

[Synthesis]

I get this feeling that like, most knowledgeable people know how fucking retarded it is, but they kind of keep it under wraps or deny it because it makes it easier to git gud relative to all the scrubs out there who have no idea what they're doing.

It really doesn't occur to you that your opinion on the matter could just be different than others who think it's fine and doing what we'd like it to do?  That your endless pursuit of (master) is just completely altogether contrary to mine, where I don't want you to hit (master) by spending time in a safe environment, or that I disagree that it should take less time altogether?

I think that's kind of speaking more out of your ego, to the point that you're casually tossing out a statement that says anyone who disagrees with you is, more than likely, blatantly trying to fuck people over.  I think that's pretty rude on your part.

If you are making those arguments, you obviously aren't who I'm talking about.

I'm talking about the people who just blatantly deny that things work the way they clearly do, when they obviously know better.  E.g. "I made it worked under exceptional circumstances, so everything's fine!"

Wisdom doesn't matter if you aren't getting fails.

The crux of the problem is generating failures on the high end.

In the Byn, or most other clans that aren't stacked with critter-grinders, once you get to high jman in a weapon skill, you can literally go RL weeks without ever getting a fail in sparring.

It is IMPOSSIBLE to get your clannies to go along with the training regimen you need to use to artificially generate those failures by creating the perfect set of circumstances.  I know what it is, trust me.  But everyone a) thinks they know better or b) needs to train different things, so they don't want to waste their time with training -your- skills properly.  Also, you cannot coordinate that IC without essentially blowing your cover as one of several knowledgeable GDB personas, and you can't honestly roleplay being a combat-training-master-personal-trainer if your PC is a lousy piece of shit.  I mean, seriously...trying to play that scenario out in my head as a 'rinther just seems ludicrous to me. Even then...once you get not very far beyond high jman, generating failures by the "optimal sparring method," even with a reasonably good partner, starts becoming very rare...and that's just with a single weapon/style, mind you.

I get this feeling that like, most knowledgeable people know how fucking retarded it is, but they kind of keep it under wraps or deny it because it makes it easier to git gud relative to all the scrubs out there who have no idea what they're doing.

It might behoove you to check out the changes posted above made by Nergal. They threw off our crotchety jaded vet calculations a bit. And yes, drastic changes in the 6 months you were gone Synth. Git Gud Bra.

I doubt those changes have anything to do with fail generation.  I suspect it's all changes in how large the skill-bump is from a failure for a combat skill.  That's the easiest explanation for "easier to skill up early on, still hard to skill up later on."

It occurs to me that that's an exceptional scenario, Synthesis, usually arising after a total party wipe with only a few survivors. I'd say more on the matter but I can't, unfortunately, so I apologize for having to use the line find out IC, if you can. There's been a LOT of tweaks lately and most of us don't really know what half of them are, only hints, and just have to feel it out. The changes as of late have been of staggering proportions, not to mention that there's now a building team and so browsing the markets or typing craft useless.thing is actually an exciting grab bag of results as of late. There's calls going out for submissions of new crafts all the time, so that thing you set a trigger to auto-junk might just be something wickedly cool.

... and there's likely to be more tweaks if the momentum keeps up. For a few years things felt kind of stagnant and bits of code that seemed to be counter-intuitive were just "how it is" and you had to "deal with it". I'm enjoying the changes immensely and perhaps over time these issues that are had with certain skills and guild balance will be adjusted in favorable ways.

No, it's not an exceptional scenario.  It's -the- common scenario.  Nobody in city-based clans is "good."  PCs with good stats and decent skills look good to scrubs, but they really aren't.  For example...when I was playing Giuseppe, that Byn Sarge with nearly the same sdesc was already in-game.  I went through the Byn and was competent.  I went to Northern Salarr and branched my first weapon skills before I got exiled from Tuluk.  Then I joined Oash and power-grinded on Ultimate Mobs while "patrolling."

That Byn Sarge made lieutenant in the Byn and later invited me to come back and spar with him.  I fucking pulverized him.  Like had him half-dead with sparring weapons while he barely grazed me a single time.  Giuseppe's stats were about average for the current game:  good strength, egood agility.  Nothing to write home about.

I had a dwarf ranger join the Tulki Legions after I had spent a lot of time power-grinding, and I straight-up fucking embarrassed a Jihaen Templar in sparring.  Like lit his ass up and nearly killed him with sparring weapons.

That's the difference, folks.  It is -enormous-.

My argument is that honestly, there is NO REASON why a Jihaen templar or a Byn Lieutenant, who have spent their entire careers training to fight other people, who have been sparring and sparring and sparring religiously, should get their asses handed to them by a guy who just started wrassling stilt lizards (may they RIP) once he mastered disarm.

Yes, it should be difficult to "git gud," but the difficulty shouldn't be based on code knowledge and willingness to risk your ass fighting Epic Mobs (or knowing the extra-special mobs that you can literally grind to mastery on with zero risk, but only if you have 'scan' mastered).

Edited to add:  and I feel like I should point out that I'm not that guy who's running around trying to murder your ass.  I think all of my few recent PKs or attempts have been straight-up filthy peasant-on-peasant action.  In fact...I think I might've only actually attacked one other PC in the last year, and it was solely motivated by the fact that it was a semi-noob trying to take advantage of a completely clueless nub in like...the worst, most ridiculous possible way, and I almost died keeping it from happening.  My memory could be failing me, though.  I've been taking long breaks of late.

[Dunetrade55]

Valid points, I'm just noticing the changes, however. I'm not sure skilling up on wildlife is that much more effective now, as I've noticed vast increases but they're new changes, so I'm quite possibly missing something. Like Reiloth said, things are getting shaken up a bit, and what you know to be true may not be the case anymore. I've had others tell me I'm crazy for noticing a significant improvement, then there are others who are like, whoa, this is NOT how I remember it being, so eh, all my anecdotal evidence neither proves or disproves anything, and you being far more experienced than I, may have a better grasp of WHAT changed, but only if you play.

[Reiloth]

I mean, your diatribe on code is one i've seen before Synth. But it's possible it's a little behind the times, considering code changes that occurred between 1995 and now.

[evilcabbage]

the difference is synthesis is generally, 95% of the time, right about what he says.

this just might be one of the 5%.

[Reiloth]

the difference is synthesis is generally, 95% of the time, right about what he says.

this just might be one of the 5%.

95%?

I mean, Synth strongly states his opinions, but 95%?

[evilcabbage]

... 67%?

[Synthesis]

Ooooookay.

You can't just say things without providing evidence.

Who here, recently, due to code changes, has actually branched an advanced weapon skill, while doing nothing but sparring in a city-based clan, against only PCs that you know have never engaged in the critter grind?

[Reiloth]

... 67%?

[Reiloth]

Ooooookay.

You can't just say things without providing evidence.

Who here, recently, due to code changes, has actually branched an advanced weapon skill, while doing nothing but sparring in a city-based clan, against only PCs that you know have never engaged in the critter grind?

That's a rather limited control group, Synth.

[Dunetrade55]

I know there was a PC in the Byn who branched an advanced weapon skill, think it was the only elf for a while, too, and this was before the changes. I've seen people in isolated roles branch them, too.

[Yam]

He hasn't played in 6 months. His position is unassailable.

[Synthesis]

He hasn't played in 6 months. His position is unassailable.

The fact that I even asked the question means I'm open to the possibility that I'm wrong, numbnuts.

I'm asking for evidence, not telling you all to fuck off.

No, I'm telling you to fuck off, now, because you're being a little bitch.

[Dunetrade55]

Sigged.

[Yam]

He hasn't played in 6 months. His position is unassailable.

The fact that I even asked the question means I'm open to the possibility that I'm wrong, numbnuts.

I'm asking for evidence, not telling you all to fuck off.

No, I'm telling you to fuck off, now, because you're being a little bitch.

Pretty hard to give evidence about things that have taken place in the game in the past 6 months.

[th3kaiser]

Let's have folks calm down and get back on topic so this doesn't get locked.

[Reiloth]

Heh, it's likely headed that way anyways. The Code Guru has spoken, pith instructions have been given, and Backstab is apparently fine as it is.

Meanwhile, i'm probably not going to play an Assassin again, what with these Subguild options that offer backstab and poison anyways, not to mention better combinations of Ranger/Warrior/Ext Subguild. Your 'Guild' doesn't define your PC, so why limit your 'Assassin' to a mediocre skill set that has most of the teeth rounded off at the ends?

[lostinspace]

I'm willing to bet nobody, because most people in sparring clans have duties that take them outside the walls where they'll fight something other than each other. I will however be prioritizing wisdom on my next spar monkey, to see how noticeable this difference is. I do still think Assassin could use some love, like the other 2 weapon skills, and archery, and the ability to climb down things.