Overly Concerned with Skills?

[Nergal]

There is definitely a difference between these scenarios:

> think I am sparring or hunting down animals whose parts I need to get better.
> think I am punching scrabs in the dark with rocks in a bag in my inventory to get better, and I have an egg timer on my desk to keep track of when I should go out to punch scrabs again.

There's obviously a spectrum between the Goofus and Gallant scenarios. All we ask is that you try to be Gallant-ish. Consider IC justifications for what you're doing. Consider the virtual world. Gaining skill goes hand in hand with playing the game, and is nothing to be ashamed of as long as you are roleplaying. Now, the way skill-gain works isn't necessarily set in stone and it's changed in the recent past. It could change again, but if it does, it's going to be done in a measured way by people that are the most familiar with the code.

Just keep in mind a couple of things: a vast majority of player speculation on skill-gain, how it works, etc. is wrong. Roleplay and time will get you where you need to be with most skills. People who participate in the arms-race of grinding without regard for RP so they don't get killed by some other skill twink are skill twinks themselves and are dealt with. People who are obviously following suspicious skill-gain guides are dealt with. People who legitimately RP, use think/feel/emote/etc and their character's status to justify their actions, are not bothered by staff and are in fact encouraged. Sometimes there are accidents and misperceptions staff-side, but we work to correct that when it happens.

[Hauwke]

I too admit to being something of a twink, I have climbed the Gaj walls for climb with little to no rp. But I do that like once every rl week, its just so that I do have a steady stream of improvement.

I like being a good fighter in game, perhaps I am a little too good sometimes but I always emote during a fight, even against npcs and have not once put rock bags on my back for enhanced skill gains.

[James de Monet]

I made a poll about this a few months ago, and I feel similarly.  I think my biggest complaint about it is that the availability of the information seems (or at least seemed) to be increasing the gap between the 'haves' (of twinked skills) and the 'have nots'.  I don't know that I've really seen a notable decrease in the quality of RP, but I remain concerned that at some point it may become necessary to twink skills to have a character be seen as "relevant" or "useful".

I don't think it's an imminent danger, but if it ever comes about, that will probably be the day I quit Arm.  There are already plenty of games where I can get bumped from parties because I didn't put the exact accepted number of points in skill #52. 

[The Lonely Hunter]

Great post, Nergal. I agree completely. Guards and hunters are going to train to be better at what they do. Crafters will practice new techniques. These are good things, imo. I think to sum up what brought me to even think about this is the way that it is done.

A crafter RPing out trying a new technique of some sort vs someone sitting there spam crafting in a tavern. A mercenary taking tips and practicing a new way to take advantage of a foe as opposed to giving a NPC a sparring weapon and power-playing with them.

[Synthesis]

The problem with expecting people to always have a "good reason, right now" for using a skill is that there are quite a few skills that are useful only in uncommon circumstances, and only if they are maxed or near-maxed, but also take a fucking SHITLOAD of repetitious practice that is typically available only if you intentionally manufacture the circumstances--and often this is without any good reason to do so, other than intent to skill up.

If you ask me, this is not a problem with player behavior, it's a problem with game design. Y'all essentially created a bunch of useful stuff, then neglected to provide a legitimate means of achieving usefulness.  Almost every "skilling up" activity outside of clan sparring and crafting requires some degree of questionable behavior (and even crafting has to be gamed when you're a noob merchant, unless you have benefactors).

I feel like rangers, pickpockets, and merchants are the only guilds where you can really stick true-to-game and not constantly feel like you're nerfing yourself.  And hell, even with merchants, it's only that way because nobody really polices crafting activity...maybe I should cross that one off the list.

[Reiloth]

I basically practice until I fail, and don't worry about skills too much. I think if/when the main guild karma stuff gets rolled out, i'll basically always pick a 'pretty good <guild>' instead of 'grind from novice to master in 1000 days'. I basically just want a mildly competent PC. I find that plots are inaccessible to new PCs (see my previous post on Casual Players and the changing player base). I wish this weren't the case -- I found it to be less of the case in Tuluk, where my new PCs could get jumpstarted into plots almost immediately out of chargen.

When I do play in Allanak, I find myself 'training' for the first however long it takes to get to apprentice/journeyman in skills that I think the concept relies on. I do RP with people, and hang out, and otherwise get into the feel of my PC, but that in itself usually takes time and patience. I think the two processes go hand in hand.

I've been playing the game for 15 years -- And I don't find Allanak exceptionally 'Zalanthas' in a way that Tuluk wasn't. Different flavors of ice cream -- Don't yuck my yummy!

[Reiloth]

The problem with expecting people to always have a "good reason, right now" for using a skill is that there are quite a few skills that are useful only in uncommon circumstances, and only if they are maxed or near-maxed, but also take a fucking SHITLOAD of repetitious practice that is typically available only if you intentionally manufacture the circumstances--and often this is without any good reason to do so, other than intent to skill up.

If you ask me, this is not a problem with player behavior, it's a problem with game design. Y'all essentially created a bunch of useful stuff, then neglected to provide a legitimate means of achieving usefulness.  Almost every "skilling up" activity outside of clan sparring and crafting requires some degree of questionable behavior (and even crafting has to be gamed when you're a noob merchant, unless you have benefactors).

I feel like rangers, pickpockets, and merchants are the only guilds where you can really stick true-to-game and not constantly feel like you're nerfing yourself.  And hell, even with merchants, it's only that way because nobody really polices crafting activity...maybe I should cross that one off the list.

I also agree with Code Guru. I find it to be a 'flaw' of game design, not player purpose/goals. I say flaw loosely, because I don't think it's like...Staff's fault or something. It's just a fundamental part of how the 'game' works. If skills raised from successes, or if skills could have points bought into them at chargen (so you have an assassin who's slightly better at backstab or slightly better at poisoning or a warrior who can pick an advanced weapon or that level of customization), it'd be a different story.

The thing is, people don't like playing nobodies who suck at doing anything. Most guilds start with novice in literally everything, and a couple apprentices if they picked the right sub guild. I play the game to chop motherfuckerz up with bone swordz, and until I can actually do that, the grind is mind numbing. I hate it. I hate having to think about it, or having to think about skills. But it's just the game culture we live in.

Part of me also thinks...Who cares? I think if someone is blatantly abusing code, report them if you're a player, or talk with them if you're Staff. But all these notifications of people using skills, and then coming to them and saying "You know, you're using your skills too much or power gaming too much" not only seems like a monumental waste of time, but a monumental waste of energy. Why not focus on the players/people who aren't skill minded, rather than witch-hunting people who are just focusing on another aspect of the game? It's really their loss -- Armageddon is a MUD, and it does have code/skills, but the true joy of it is the RP and the RPI aspect of it, and you will never ever interact with that if you are solely focused on 'git gud'.

I do think:
-You need a modicum of skill to have fun, sometimes, depending on the clan/experience.
-You sometimes don't need any skill at all to have lots of fun. Nobles/Politics almost never require skills.
-You almost never have fun being unskilled when people expect you to be skilled. This part sucks the most.

I think we should (as a player base) be much more OK with failing, not needing to kill people to solve a problem, and focusing on the world and how to bring it to life.

[Bahliker]

There is definitely a difference between these scenarios:

> think I am sparring or hunting down animals whose parts I need to get better.
> think I am punching scrabs in the dark with rocks in a bag in my inventory to get better, and I have an egg timer on my desk to keep track of when I should go out to punch scrabs again.

I don't want to be contrary but this is exactly what I'm talking about. That anybody feels like Goofus needs to be "dealt with" is just wrong. What you've described here probably plays out in the players head more like: I am a master of the night, a fighter beyond compare, I am honing my reflexes to a razor's sharpness because I am the softspoken, always serious, BA anime antihero. I practice every morning because that's how serious people et seriously good at things like my morose violence.

Just because he's not conveying that to the rest of us very effectively is no reason to... Well do anything, really. Let them learn. Step in and "deal with" people who actually abuse the code in harmful ways. Years back I believe NPCs would carry anything you gave them with no limit to weight or inventory space, but they were still affected by weight penalties. When someone is using bags of rocks to slaughter soldiers, then you say hey stop and change what allowed the behavior in the first place. I believe that's how that went down.

Less far back my rogue whiran and his Krathi buddy encountered a *dundundunnnn* sorcerer! I think it was falcon.  He lurked for a while, creeping us out, being all mysterious and asking us questions in this tense scene. Then out of nowhere he starts casting spells like crazy. Most on nil, or at least all with no appreciable effect except the insane light show. It was obvious that time to get another fail had rolled along, whether that's correct and helpful or not, he was just skill gaining. Sat right back down and resumed the conversation. I could have seen that as a horrible offense to my sense of quality rp or complained to staff or whatever. Instead, we just agreed to avoid that clearly nutty superwizard and moved on with our adventure. That was a totally fine outcome for that part of our story.

My point I guess is instead of railing on people for playing in a way we don't like, or damaging relations with newer players who haven't seen the Better Way, let's just let it go and react to their weird-ass behavior with ic derision and murderizing until those players get right on their own.

Also specifically about focus on skills being more recent, I'll point out that people got super obsessive about how to speed up their skill gains when apocalypse was created and a lot of people had access to a copy of the code at the time. Fools have been running on the same model ever since. It's not new behavior.

[Lizzie]

I basically practice until I fail, and don't worry about skills too much. I think if/when the main guild karma stuff gets rolled out, i'll basically always pick a 'pretty good <guild>' instead of 'grind from novice to master in 1000 days'. I basically just want a mildly competent PC. I find that plots are inaccessible to new PCs (see my previous post on Casual Players and the changing player base). I wish this weren't the case -- I found it to be less of the case in Tuluk, where my new PCs could get jumpstarted into plots almost immediately out of chargen.

When I do play in Allanak, I find myself 'training' for the first however long it takes to get to apprentice/journeyman in skills that I think the concept relies on. I do RP with people, and hang out, and otherwise get into the feel of my PC, but that in itself usually takes time and patience. I think the two processes go hand in hand.

I've been playing the game for 15 years -- And I don't find Allanak exceptionally 'Zalanthas' in a way that Tuluk wasn't. Different flavors of ice cream -- Don't yuck my yummy!

I hate the "practice til I fail" thing. I mean, I hate the concept of this, as an IC concept. It's not an IC concept. If my character is working on making red shoes, I'm not going to spam-craft red shoes til I fail to make red shoes. I'll craft til I SUCCEED in making a pair of red shoes. and then, I've made them, and don't need to try and make any more that day.

But maybe - if I want to get some "codedly-useful training" in, I'll think "I need to work on making shoes. I'll try a couple of different types." And then I'll run through the craft list of shoes I can make with these materials - if I make a few and still don't fail, well I'm not going to run myself out of materials in a single day, that'd be pointless. So I'll stop anyway. If I DO fail - I might RP being frustrated with not being very good at it yet, and give up for the day.

While I know that *I* won't see a skill bump til I fail "x" amount of tries in "y" period of time as long as I only attempt and fail once every "z" minutes - my character knows no such thing, and I refuse to play it as if she does. My character wants to succeed, not fail.

[Jingo]

If players could branch their skill trees without mastering the prerequisites first; we would see a lot less of the nonsensical grindy play.

[bardlyone]

If players could branch their skill trees without mastering the prerequisites first; we would see a lot less of the nonsensical grindy play.

This.

I passionately hate skill branching, because inevitably, I have to master something I don't give a damn about to get something I want, unless I purposely choose a subguild that 9/10 times only has skills my main guild will eventually branch. Which sucks.

[Reiloth]

I basically practice until I fail, and don't worry about skills too much. I think if/when the main guild karma stuff gets rolled out, i'll basically always pick a 'pretty good <guild>' instead of 'grind from novice to master in 1000 days'. I basically just want a mildly competent PC. I find that plots are inaccessible to new PCs (see my previous post on Casual Players and the changing player base). I wish this weren't the case -- I found it to be less of the case in Tuluk, where my new PCs could get jumpstarted into plots almost immediately out of chargen.

When I do play in Allanak, I find myself 'training' for the first however long it takes to get to apprentice/journeyman in skills that I think the concept relies on. I do RP with people, and hang out, and otherwise get into the feel of my PC, but that in itself usually takes time and patience. I think the two processes go hand in hand.

I've been playing the game for 15 years -- And I don't find Allanak exceptionally 'Zalanthas' in a way that Tuluk wasn't. Different flavors of ice cream -- Don't yuck my yummy!

I hate the "practice til I fail" thing. I mean, I hate the concept of this, as an IC concept. It's not an IC concept. If my character is working on making red shoes, I'm not going to spam-craft red shoes til I fail to make red shoes. I'll craft til I SUCCEED in making a pair of red shoes. and then, I've made them, and don't need to try and make any more that day.

But maybe - if I want to get some "codedly-useful training" in, I'll think "I need to work on making shoes. I'll try a couple of different types." And then I'll run through the craft list of shoes I can make with these materials - if I make a few and still don't fail, well I'm not going to run myself out of materials in a single day, that'd be pointless. So I'll stop anyway. If I DO fail - I might RP being frustrated with not being very good at it yet, and give up for the day.

While I know that *I* won't see a skill bump til I fail "x" amount of tries in "y" period of time as long as I only attempt and fail once every "z" minutes - my character knows no such thing, and I refuse to play it as if she does. My character wants to succeed, not fail.

Ok cool. Works with crafting. Works with no other skills.

[Dunetrade55]

If players could branch their skill trees without mastering the prerequisites first; we would see a lot less of the nonsensical grindy play.

This.

I passionately hate skill branching, because inevitably, I have to master something I don't give a damn about to get something I want, unless I purposely choose a subguild that 9/10 times only has skills my main guild will eventually branch. Which sucks.

That.

And, Rieve is correct, despite semi-grindy play I still find myself neck-deep in shit by 2-3 days played... even with combat/stealthy characters. I'm like, awww no, here we go again. I can't tell Lord Fussypants I haven't maxed sneak/hide/poisoning/piercing/backstab/climb/demonfire/etc. for this crazed plan... that's where being SEMI-grindy comes in, because you have to live fast and wild to make the kind of contacts you need when the shit goes down. Most times the egg-timer dings and I'm like, no thanks, this other stuff is too important. I don't frown on someone who has an egg-timer on their desk, I just know I'll have other advantages in the face of a problem. It's a sacrifice. For one thing to be gained, another crucial piece must be lost. Insert insane rambling about Full Metal Alchemist here.

[Bogre]

I think Armaddict is right on the money. There's a lot more push towards achieving that next skill rank now that you see it. And for some reason, it seems many players think that they have to pass a certain threshold before they can 'play' their PC. Part of playing, it seems to me, is getting there. Is there a grind to it? Yea, but something's got to make memorable characters memorable. Someone recently mentioned having a weapon skill stuck at 'advanced'...I mean, by the time you get there in most characters, you can probably lay waste to the vast majority of stuff you'll encounter. But there's still this push, because now subjectively good isn't objectively what you see.

As far as playing for skills, I definitely do try to optimize skill gains if I'm out doing stuff. I like to see progress skill-wise as much as anyone. Though I don't generally go out and grind stuff or use timers or anything crazy. But if there's an opportunity to practice a little bit I'll take it.

And finally, I think the discussion about code has grown more and more in the open in the GDB, for sure. Probably has something to do with the growing availability of that information, but there you have it.

[Lizzie]

I basically practice until I fail, and don't worry about skills too much. I think if/when the main guild karma stuff gets rolled out, i'll basically always pick a 'pretty good <guild>' instead of 'grind from novice to master in 1000 days'. I basically just want a mildly competent PC. I find that plots are inaccessible to new PCs (see my previous post on Casual Players and the changing player base). I wish this weren't the case -- I found it to be less of the case in Tuluk, where my new PCs could get jumpstarted into plots almost immediately out of chargen.

When I do play in Allanak, I find myself 'training' for the first however long it takes to get to apprentice/journeyman in skills that I think the concept relies on. I do RP with people, and hang out, and otherwise get into the feel of my PC, but that in itself usually takes time and patience. I think the two processes go hand in hand.

I've been playing the game for 15 years -- And I don't find Allanak exceptionally 'Zalanthas' in a way that Tuluk wasn't. Different flavors of ice cream -- Don't yuck my yummy!

I hate the "practice til I fail" thing. I mean, I hate the concept of this, as an IC concept. It's not an IC concept. If my character is working on making red shoes, I'm not going to spam-craft red shoes til I fail to make red shoes. I'll craft til I SUCCEED in making a pair of red shoes. and then, I've made them, and don't need to try and make any more that day.

But maybe - if I want to get some "codedly-useful training" in, I'll think "I need to work on making shoes. I'll try a couple of different types." And then I'll run through the craft list of shoes I can make with these materials - if I make a few and still don't fail, well I'm not going to run myself out of materials in a single day, that'd be pointless. So I'll stop anyway. If I DO fail - I might RP being frustrated with not being very good at it yet, and give up for the day.

While I know that *I* won't see a skill bump til I fail "x" amount of tries in "y" period of time as long as I only attempt and fail once every "z" minutes - my character knows no such thing, and I refuse to play it as if she does. My character wants to succeed, not fail.

Ok cool. Works with crafting. Works with no other skills.

And yet you don't use it on other skills do you? In combat sparring - do you fight until you miss, and then stop? No. You fight for several RL minutes at least, probably closer to 20 minutes real-time (the beginning of early morning until the end of late morning). You succeed and fail many times during this window, and you don't stop just because you fail.

When you're out grebbing - do you try til you fail, and then go back in? Or do you try til you get at LEAST the cost of a water refill and stable fees, whether you fail or not?

When you're skinning chalton - do you skin til you fail? Or do you skin til there's no chalton left in your area? Do you only kill one chalton at a time, skin it, and then move to the next chalton, kill it, skin it - to make sure that you only kill critters that you will skin, so that you know to stop when you fail in skinning it? Or do you come across a whole bunch of them, kill them all, and then worry about whether or not you'll succeed or fail in skinning it? Is that why there are so many scrab parts across the road? Because someone is going along trying to fail at skinning over and over again, and just keeps succeeding and having to try failing at more of them?

All of this is OOC player stuff, geared toward min-maxing the "fail = improve" methodology of coded game play. And it all reeks of twinkery, and it makes zero RP sense.

[Lizzie]

I think Armaddict is right on the money. There's a lot more push towards achieving that next skill rank now that you see it. And for some reason, it seems many players think that they have to pass a certain threshold before they can 'play' their PC. Part of playing, it seems to me, is getting there. Is there a grind to it? Yea, but something's got to make memorable characters memorable. Someone recently mentioned having a weapon skill stuck at 'advanced'...I mean, by the time you get there in most characters, you can probably lay waste to the vast majority of stuff you'll encounter. But there's still this push, because now subjectively good isn't objectively what you see.

As far as playing for skills, I definitely do try to optimize skill gains if I'm out doing stuff. I like to see progress skill-wise as much as anyone. Though I don't generally go out and grind stuff or use timers or anything crazy. But if there's an opportunity to practice a little bit I'll take it.

And finally, I think the discussion about code has grown more and more in the open in the GDB, for sure. Probably has something to do with the growing availability of that information, but there you have it.

When I'm interacting with people who want to know whether or not I can accomplish a specific coded task, I answer them however I think my *character* would answer them. "Well yes, Lord Fancypants. I killed a scrab just yesterday and was able to pry the chitin off of it. Would you like me to try again today?" or "I don't know, Lord Fancypants, I've never tried." or "Well I've tried before Lord Fancypants, and wasn't able then. I don't know what I'll be able to do tomorrow but I'll let you know tomorrow night."

[Riev]

I don't see why making four pairs of red shoes, failing on the fifth one, and stopping, makes 'zero RP sense'. Maybe you get frustrated because you feel that cobbling together shoes is second nature, but suddenly you drop a stitch and there is a big hole in the side? Oof. Maybe its time to stop making shoes for today.


For combat and grebbing and other skills? The only reason people don't stop after the first fail, lets be real serious, is because there's a thought that you need to fail a number of times to "guarantee" the skill up. Gith guard merchant? Same thing. Three times. Rough circle? Its just an excuse to ensure the fail counts.

More on topic; yes code talk has gotten more prevalent. Maybe staff felt that limited talk in a controlled environment was better than IRC/AIM/Discord/etc. Maybe current staff incarnation felt more like providing a wider base of code knowledge for new players to be able to keep up with the 20year veterans who "had to learn the hard way". Maybe the veterans are looking at the game through rose colored glasses.

Or maybe the staff decided that after more than just one hack into their database, that if they provide some modicum of information to the players, the urge to hack and steal their information won't be as difficult to control.

[Miradus]

I would not have wanted to play in the era where code talk was completely forbidden.

I like code. I am a coder. I have coded my own games, worked on other people's games, and made a fine living debugging code in the professional world. I am fascinated by the nuances in game code as much as I am by any setting.

At times playing Arm is extremely frustrating for me because nobody (who actually knows) will talk about how the code works. All you ever see is speculation, which while it might help you twink (might) doesn't scratch the curious itch that people who like code have. We want to see the code, not someone's theory on how the code they've never seen works.

The "try till you fail" thing is weird and as far as I've seen, unique to Arm. Even among roleplay enforced games it's more common to see a "improve as you play" skill progression. Either a small portion from fails and a larger portion from success, or a percentage chance to learn from either.

In my roleplay I don't tend to really focus on "skill gains". When sparring, if I see a fail I'll emote a out growing frustrated and then either switch grip or switch weapons. (I rarely acknowledge crafting fails, writing them off as a continuing the effort instead of completely starting over.) A failure when skinning to get the hide I shrug off not as a failure of skinning but as the hide was just too damaged in the fighting.

[Synthesis]

I think Armaddict is right on the money. There's a lot more push towards achieving that next skill rank now that you see it. And for some reason, it seems many players think that they have to pass a certain threshold before they can 'play' their PC. Part of playing, it seems to me, is getting there. Is there a grind to it? Yea, but something's got to make memorable characters memorable. Someone recently mentioned having a weapon skill stuck at 'advanced'...I mean, by the time you get there in most characters, you can probably lay waste to the vast majority of stuff you'll encounter. But there's still this push, because now subjectively good isn't objectively what you see.

As far as playing for skills, I definitely do try to optimize skill gains if I'm out doing stuff. I like to see progress skill-wise as much as anyone. Though I don't generally go out and grind stuff or use timers or anything crazy. But if there's an opportunity to practice a little bit I'll take it.

And finally, I think the discussion about code has grown more and more in the open in the GDB, for sure. Probably has something to do with the growing availability of that information, but there you have it.

You don't "lay waste" at advanced, and you never did.  The difference is that before advanced weapon skills went in, nobody knew WHAT laying waste actually was.

People were stuck at jman and thought winning was "laying waste," until people started grinding for trident weapons and realized that "winning" is scrub, "laying waste" is multiple consecutive head shots with reel-lock from combat initiation  to mantis head.

The bitching about weapon skills started when folks realized it was nigh-impossible to branch them.  It intensified when people could see just how low they are when the plateau begins.

[whitt]

The "try till you fail" thing is weird and as far as I've seen, unique to Arm.

Likely a holdover from old Runequest.  Which may have shared/gotten it from HARN.  Otherwise, agreed. I don't like the concept in an RPI where we are reminded to keep in mind the virtual population, that the best PC fighters have virtually no one to help train them to keep improving.

[Miradus]

I never saw either of those. Likely in my era of graphical mmo playing.

I really only complain about the "practice until you fail" thing when crafting, and that's largely due to other issues that are imbalanced.

For example, if I want to improve widget making then I buy the three components for my widget and go sit down to craft them. Total cost of components = 30 sid. I succeed in making the widget, which means I get no skill up (boo!). But at least I now have a widget, right? The NPC will now buy the completed widget for 12 sid. So not only did I not get my skill up, but I lost money WHILE CRAFTING.

I know the economy is supposed to be player to player, but it's not. If you want a player-driven economy then you have to remove all NPC merchants totally. Nobody wants my junior level widget. They all want exclusive elf-crafted widgets or a special custom-made widget from Salarr.

You can still make a fat pile of sids as an indie merchant, but not really from doing what an indie merchant is designed to do. Really you only make those sids from the other tools an indie merchant has, which feel a wee bit exploity.

And a ranger with the haggle skill is going to make so much more and so much easier than an indie merchant that it just sort of makes me wonder every time why I started a merchant.

If I was in charge of the economic system (rest assured, I'm not), I would remove all NPC merchants except for ones that purchase raw materials. The only NPC merchants available that sell finished products would be ones attached to an actual player merchant and would sell only what that person had crafted. There would be no more NPC merchants selling a list of pre-loaded items.

[Synthesis]

Uh, an indie ranger with haggle is nowhere near what a merchant can do in terms of 'sid generation.

It is ridiculously easy to line up hunters to buy crafting loot from, if you're on peak time.  Once your haggle skill is mastered...it's just ludicrous.  Even a ranger/master armorcrafter can't compare to a merchant.  Even without buying raw materials from other PCs, the upside potential is just mind-bogglingly broken.  In fact, with maxed haggle, there used to be 2 NPC merchants in the game (probably still are, judging from the buy/sell tables) where you could buy something from the NPC and sell it right back to him for more 'sid than you bought it for.

If you haven't blown hundreds of thousands of 'sid on dumb shit and philanthropy by day 20 as a merchant, you either a) aren't really trying or b) just don't know what you're doing.

[Miradus]

I suspect B.

I don't play peak time (I usually am not around after 8pm) and I operate mostly out of Luir's and Morin's (I like the north, don't like the south).

There's a couple of exploity mechanics with a merchant that I can turn into nearly limitless sid in Luir's, but I generally only do it so that I have some coin in my pocket to buy from indie rangers. Of which there are few on the ground now.

[tortall]

The "try till you fail" thing is weird and as far as I've seen, unique to Arm.

Likely a holdover from old Runequest.  Which may have shared/gotten it from HARN.  Otherwise, agreed. I don't like the concept in an RPI where we are reminded to keep in mind the virtual population, that the best PC fighters have virtually no one to help train them to keep improving.

I actually like the concept of skill up when you fail. In real like, do you learn more from your failures or from your successes? Gotta say, I've never seen a kid that will believe to not put their hand on the hot stove until they've actually done and and learned from their mistake.

I also agree that the economy system is a bit out of wack. You can usually sell raw materials than you could for the completed item, and the cost to buy the raw material is often 5x more value than what you can make from it. Add that to low skill, and without bring in a clan where the hungers bring you an endless supply of materials, it's really hard. I've seen people do it and get insanely rich. That's not the issue.

[Miradus]

In real life as a craftsman, I can produce something of higher or lower quality. A "fail" may be a mediocre sword blade instead of an excellent one. And in the process I learned how to more consistently make an excellent one.

I also learn how to judge the quality of materials so that I don't begin trying to make an excellent sword blade with shitty iron.

I also can, at many stages in the process, stop and review what I'm doing and either repeat a previous step in order to do it more expertly or take more time and care to make sure a specific process will complete. A failure is almost never a complete loss of materials.

The problem with learning only on failure in Arm isn't the fact that learning more from failure isn't realistic ... it's that failure in Arm crafting is so BINARY. In most cases you either make the widget or you destroy all or most of the materials. And the finished product is equal to all the other ones. I can't spend more time and effort making an individual item better than another merchant. My object_id 37 bone knife is completely equivalent to the master craftsman's object_id 37 bone knife.