Overly Concerned with Skills?

[Riev]

It may require a split off, but perhaps "weapons and armor" can have a "tool quality" upgrade at some point in the future.


Though the point remains... people ARE concerned with skills. The issue at hand, is it "overly", and does it ACTUALLY affect the RP of the game, or is it baseless fears about what "could be" happening?

If there is an 'overall loss of quality RP' in the game, I still wouldn't attribute it to "people concerned about their skills" as a loss of retention for the superior players of old.

[Miradus]

I'd ask how, specifically, a player overly concerned with skills is detrimental to roleplay.

Even with Nergal's extreme example of the night-crawling scrab puncher with rocks, I fail to understand how that hurts roleplay.

HIS roleplay during the activity may be questionable, but in all likelihood he is doing it alone.

The two fat guys roleplaying big-breasted lesbians mudsexing in an Allanak apartment don't suddenly stop and say, "Wait! I feel our roleplay has been diminished by some guy twinking somewhere in the desert!"

If the rock-carrying scrab puncher roleplayed receiving instruction from an elderly desert samurai about how carrying rocks and fighting scrab bare-handed would turn him into One Punch Man then doesn't it suddenly become "good roleplay"?

This is a vaporous, highly-subjective thing, this "good roleplay". It's also not consistent. There are days we nail it and days we "phone it in", even with the same character.

This debate feels largely to me like older players taking a swipe at newer players.

[Synthesis]

I'm a pretty old player, and I'm not taking a swipe at anyone.

Do I go out with bags of rocks and drunken blind-fight scrabs? No.

When I want to fail in combat, do I intentionally keep myself slightly more encumbered than I need to be, and go out to fight things that I don't really need to fight?  Absolutely.

Do I massively break character in order to do so? No.

Do I, at chargen, intentionally create characters with backgrounds that will facilitate training the skillset that I need to improve? Absolutely.

Do I sit here with an egg timer? No.

Do I know exactly what RL time every dawn is, and plan accordingly, if possible? Absolutely.

[Lutagar]

You eventually get to a point where you have to choose between never getting a miss or blatant twinkery. I wish we had some kind of update to address this.

[whitt]

You eventually get to a point where you have to choose between never getting a miss or blatant twinkery. I wish we had some kind of update to address this.

If you never get a miss... why would you think your skill needs to be higher?  The answer is that the branching point is "too damn high". 

Change the branch points lower and people will no longer feel a need to twink to a maxed out skill list or complain about how impossible it is to get there.  Either that or allow people to be taught and pick up skills they have the ability to branch without reaching the branching point in the "gate" skill.
 

[Lutagar]

It's impossible to train and not improve. It's impossible to get to a point where you can't improve. World class martial artists don't go, oh, well, there's no way I can possibly get better so I don't have to do anything now.

It's particularly notable that since the start of armageddon, no one, not a single PC, has ever branched and maxed all of the skills that come with guild_warrior.

[Synthesis]

You eventually get to a point where you have to choose between never getting a miss or blatant twinkery. I wish we had some kind of update to address this.

If you never get a miss... why would you think your skill needs to be higher?  The answer is that the branching point is "too damn high". 

Change the branch points lower and people will no longer feel a need to twink to a maxed out skill list or complain about how impossible it is to get there.  Either that or allow people to be taught and pick up skills they have the ability to branch without reaching the branching point in the "gate" skill.

Your defenses and other skills are unfortunately linked to your weapon skills, so "if you never get a miss" at jman, it means your defense will also forever be nerfed as well, which is a persistent frustration.  Prior to the introduction of branched weapons, everyone assumed this was "normal at max."  Now, we know that it isn't, and it is an entirely normal response to be frustrated about it.

For me, "branching an advanced weapon skill" is utterly pointless, because I -probably- am not willing to grind that grind twice+ to master another weapon skill.  The point is to master -a- weapon skill, because it makes a massive functional difference in both offense and defense.

Again, the difference is not between "winning a fight" and "losing a fight."  The difference is between "winning a fight" and "crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you, and hearing the lamentations of the women."

[Miradus]

But if you're fighting or sparring with other players, isn't THEIR defense going to go up, meaning that you will incrementally have your offense/weapon skills go up?

When I started trying yoga (Don't laugh. I have injuries that require me to stretch) I was able to Youtube it for a little while, but to advance much further I need a teacher.

I don't find it a stretch that at a certain point you'd need to turn to an academy or an instructor inside Arm. If the code supports such a thing, wouldn't that be a good roleplay opportunity? Advanced warriors hire themselves out as instructors or cadre for a house/unit?

[Lutagar]

The problem is, if there's a PC that's skilled enough to be the instructor you mentioned, they either got that strong by using the methods mentioned in Nergal's posts or got staff boosts.

[Synthesis]

But if you're fighting or sparring with other players, isn't THEIR defense going to go up, meaning that you will incrementally have your offense/weapon skills go up?

When I started trying yoga (Don't laugh. I have injuries that require me to stretch) I was able to Youtube it for a little while, but to advance much further I need a teacher.

I don't find it a stretch that at a certain point you'd need to turn to an academy or an instructor inside Arm. If the code supports such a thing, wouldn't that be a good roleplay opportunity? Advanced warriors hire themselves out as instructors or cadre for a house/unit?

No.

-Maybe- d-elf clans who allow magickers to buff them can reach a point where sparring a PC at the top tier will generate misses enough to get to mastery in a reasonable timeframe.  Otherwise, (base offense + weapon skill + random factor) is always greater than (base defense + random factor).

The problem is, you can't make base D more powerful, because then it unbalances combat.  The solution is to make parries and blocks count as misses.

Again, this is a problem that's been described in laborious detail elsewhere.

To give an example of the scope of the problem:

Today, I killed 3 scrabs, 3 giant tarantulas, 4 raptors (at once), a rat, a chalton, a snake, an inix, and a gith.

At only (advanced), I failed a weapon-skill check twice on the same giant tarantula.  To be fair, I was only -trying- to generate a weapon-skill failure for about 20 minutes before I got it.  But the point remains:  at a certain level (far below mastery), you must intentionally seek out weapon skill failures, or you will never get them.

[The Lonely Hunter]

"I don't find it a stretch that at a certain point you'd need to turn to an academy or an instructor inside Arm. If the code supports such a thing, wouldn't that be a good roleplay opportunity? Advanced warriors hire themselves out as instructors or cadre for a house/unit?"

Miradus, that is perfect. I believe that problem is (as you can see how this post turned into a mechanics topic somehow) that people are thinking less and less like that. They are more concerned with the hard code than RPing things out and more and more people seem to be thinking that there is nothing wrong with that. Knowing the basics of how the code works helps - we do use skills. We should have a /basic/ understanding. When you start crunching numbers and getting angry because you can't fail at something there is something wrong.

I don't think that letting us see where our skills are is a bad thing. It can help us RP appropriately. I love that we can see where our skills stand and I agree, it is really neat to see that skill go up or a new skill show up. We also don't need some novice swordsman twirling his blade all around and emoting that he is Conan.

I think that it just turned into a slippery slope and now a portion of the community believes that it should be acceptable. I believe, and I may be wrong of course, that such focus detracts from the level of RP and you end up with people doing really silly things.

[Synthesis]

Like I said before...as soon as they added the advanced weapon skills, people started doing "silly" things to branch them...because doing silly things is necessary to branch them, and because everyone knows that the branch point is mastery...ergo if you have not branched, you by rather simple logic, have not mastered the base skill.

Almost every other skill in the game has a tolerable learning curve.

I'd say that the vast majority of what you're complaining about, and perceiving as a problem, is relating specifically to weapon skills, because NOTHING ELSE is so difficult or broken that it requires borderline shenanigans to master.

That's why this isn't a derail.  The problem IS weapon skills.  If the problem were fixed, we would stop complaining about it.

I guarantee you if Staff came out and said "Okay, shield blocks and parries now count (or have always counted) as failures for weapon skills, but we've adjusted (or not) the learning curves so that it still takes about 15-20 days to master a weapon skill," the vast majority of the bitching about training would stop.  Very few people are complaining about the timeline itself...they're complaining about what you apparently have to do to get there, because all Staff will say is "works as intended."

[Lutagar]

Honestly, this figure it out yourself attitude when it comes to code has always felt like a way for veteran players to always have a one up over newer ones.

I miss the days where my rangers could ROFLSTOMP any warrior because their players didn't understand the consequences of practicing defense while having parry and weapons drawn and everyone pretended that them not knowing was somehow enchaining their experience.

[Miradus]

I've only had one long lived warrior, and he only reached journeyman. But dang, I could take on most everything I had a need to, including multiple spiders at once or a kryl.

Before that I was very keen on seeing mastery of a weapon, but after that I realized I'd be content to just have it happen naturally as the result of a long-lived and fun-to-play character. My biggest worry was having low skills and being fragile but that seemed to dry up at around 5 days played. Another player was dangerous, but I could handle carru and other things that I'd randomly run into ... meaning longer life.

[nauta]

I've only had one long lived warrior, and he only reached journeyman. But dang, I could take on most everything I had a need to, including multiple spiders at once or a kryl.

Before that I was very keen on seeing mastery of a weapon, but after that I realized I'd be content to just have it happen naturally as the result of a long-lived and fun-to-play character. My biggest worry was having low skills and being fragile but that seemed to dry up at around 5 days played. Another player was dangerous, but I could handle carru and other things that I'd randomly run into ... meaning longer life.

Exactly.  My own findings is that if you play realistic -- take a default template as a hunter who goes out and hunts one animal every in game day -- you will move through three stages:

1. Weak.  This takes about five days to overcome.  It kind of stinks, but isn't that terrible, and a lot of fun can be had getting your ass kicked.

2. Perfect.  This happens from about 5 to 20 days, I'd say.  You get rolled now and then by a gortok, carru/gith are definitely a flee beast, but you can more or less handle 80% of the mobs out there.

3. Too Good.  Then you hit this level where nothing hurts you unless it gets lucky (with the rare 5% of beasts that you have to go out of your way to find anyway).  If you want to liven things up you have to do tricky things like wishing up (hehe) or holding things in the offhand or 'forgetting' to draw your weapon, or whatever.

This is all a PvE perspective.  My own view on PvP is that either (1) you get poisoned/locked roomed or (2) you can flee (unless merchant, I guess), so there's not much point in skilling to win at the PvP in straight combat.

[Synthesis]

I've only had one long lived warrior, and he only reached journeyman. But dang, I could take on most everything I had a need to, including multiple spiders at once or a kryl.

Before that I was very keen on seeing mastery of a weapon, but after that I realized I'd be content to just have it happen naturally as the result of a long-lived and fun-to-play character. My biggest worry was having low skills and being fragile but that seemed to dry up at around 5 days played. Another player was dangerous, but I could handle carru and other things that I'd randomly run into ... meaning longer life.

Exactly.  My own findings is that if you play realistic -- take a default template as a hunter who goes out and hunts one animal every in game day -- you will move through three stages:

1. Weak.  This takes about five days to overcome.  It kind of stinks, but isn't that terrible, and a lot of fun can be had getting your ass kicked.

2. Perfect.  This happens from about 5 to 20 days, I'd say.  You get rolled now and then by a gortok, carru/gith are definitely a flee beast, but you can more or less handle 80% of the mobs out there.

3. Too Good.  Then you hit this level where nothing hurts you unless it gets lucky (with the rare 5% of beasts that you have to go out of your way to find anyway).  If you want to liven things up you have to do tricky things like wishing up (hehe) or holding things in the offhand or 'forgetting' to draw your weapon, or whatever.

This is all a PvE perspective.  My own view on PvP is that either (1) you get poisoned/locked roomed or (2) you can flee (unless merchant, I guess), so there's not much point in skilling to win at the PvP in straight combat.

You're confusing "good" with "defensively sufficient for PvE."

Trust me, it is ENTIRELY possible to die in straight-up melee PvP where one successful bash, charge, or reel is all it takes.  Whether you do 10 damage with a solid chop to the arm or 35 damage with a brutal chop to the neck is not random.  Does it matter for hunting gortoks? No.  Does it matter in PvP? HELL YES IT DOES.

[Riev]

Its also important to note that most of the organizations in game can get you from "dead in a second" to "doesn't need to worry about much" in the course of an in game year. Byn training for a year produces people that, at least in my experience, can either take care of spiders on their own, or suddenly aren't immediately resigned to death. This is why Byn Troopers make the "meat" of an RPT, and are sold as the common frontline soldiers.

But that's an in game YEAR, an OOC 6 weeks, of semi-regular training to be 'competent' in the Wastes.

Or, you could spend half the time with a different mindset and focus, and be able to spend 4 weeks, and even then the MAJORITY of it socializing or bar sitting.

Related to the "find a grandmaster to teach you", I'm still on the "fat fucking chance finding one" unless they went through some extremely twinky times themselves. Should being a MASTER SWORDSMAN take two IG years and boom? Fuck no. But it shouldn't take 20 years, and even then only because you wanted to branch "smaller swords"

[Delirium]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, even though I'm sure I'll be shouted down again...

You don't have to resort to stupid tactics to Get Gud anymore. Y'all are operating on out of date presumptions.

source: actual experience within the last 6 months of gameplay.

[nauta]

I've only had one long lived warrior, and he only reached journeyman. But dang, I could take on most everything I had a need to, including multiple spiders at once or a kryl.

Before that I was very keen on seeing mastery of a weapon, but after that I realized I'd be content to just have it happen naturally as the result of a long-lived and fun-to-play character. My biggest worry was having low skills and being fragile but that seemed to dry up at around 5 days played. Another player was dangerous, but I could handle carru and other things that I'd randomly run into ... meaning longer life.

Exactly.  My own findings is that if you play realistic -- take a default template as a hunter who goes out and hunts one animal every in game day -- you will move through three stages:

1. Weak.  This takes about five days to overcome.  It kind of stinks, but isn't that terrible, and a lot of fun can be had getting your ass kicked.

2. Perfect.  This happens from about 5 to 20 days, I'd say.  You get rolled now and then by a gortok, carru/gith are definitely a flee beast, but you can more or less handle 80% of the mobs out there.

3. Too Good.  Then you hit this level where nothing hurts you unless it gets lucky (with the rare 5% of beasts that you have to go out of your way to find anyway).  If you want to liven things up you have to do tricky things like wishing up (hehe) or holding things in the offhand or 'forgetting' to draw your weapon, or whatever.

This is all a PvE perspective.  My own view on PvP is that either (1) you get poisoned/locked roomed or (2) you can flee (unless merchant, I guess), so there's not much point in skilling to win at the PvP in straight combat.

You're confusing "good" with "defensively sufficient for PvE."

This is all a PvE perspective.

Trust me, it is ENTIRELY possible to die in straight-up melee PvP where one successful bash, charge, or reel is all it takes.  Whether you do 10 damage with a solid chop to the arm or 35 damage with a brutal chop to the neck is not random.  Does it matter for hunting gortoks? No.  Does it matter in PvP? HELL YES IT DOES.

My own view on PvP is that either (1) you get poisoned/locked roomed or (2) you can flee (unless merchant, I guess), so there's not much point in skilling to win at the PvP in straight combat.

[Miradus]

Well PVP is territory I haven't engaged in much, so I can't really say.

I've been involved in 3 pvp incidents over dozens of characters.

One I got shot up with arrows and I fell over a cliff trying to run away. *doh*
One I started and could have fled out at any time but didn't.
One I started and then fled out of.

I don't particularly feel that I was vastly overwhelmed by someone else's coded power in any of them. (Well, MAYBE the one where I ate a few fireballs but I did have the ability to get away.)

I have no way of knowing what their skillsheet looked like, but there was no "WTF PWNED" moment in my head. Which you sometimes get even on pure PK muds.

I think if you're going to be reel-locked and murderized then it probably would have happened with a carru as well as another player. I'm aware that as someone who hasn't focused on pvp I'm talking out my ass, but hey, listen to that ass go.

[Dunetrade55]

I once reel-locked a dude so hard while I was playing a c-elf (street duel, bad move on his part) that I could barely disengage fast enough to stop from killing him. Then he attacked again, luckily, I was quick and only critted him once more. He required a while of resting to recuperate. Had I bashed? If it landed (it probably would), it would have been over.

This with a jman weapon skill... and elf arms.

I used a spear as apprentice, as a c-elf with (relatively) shit endurance and helped a human warrior branch a weapon skill, and it was STILL a tossup at the end who would win a sparring match. This tells me there's more at play than weapon skill (master), but it's all anecdotal. Fighting an opponent on the ground is not the same as fighting a skilled mounted opponent... hint hint. (byn stables and mounted combat rink ftw)

[Miradus]

I know I've "made it" as a combat character in PVE when mobs stop going from taking a butt-kicking down to near death and then ushering up a Rocky-style victory and nearly killing me.

[Armaddict]

Synthesis knows the PvP side of the game as well.  I think a lot of the conceptions are based around the lowered amount of PvP in the game relative to where it once was.

PvE, you're completely fine at journeyman weapon skills.  I have stated through various threads that I don't want weapon skill progression changed, but I do think that advanced weapon skills should come earlier to prevent the need to do silly things to use something that should be an option for a warrior to do.

PvP, being at advanced rather than journeyman is a big deal.  Being at master rather than advanced is a huge deal.  I rather like this setup, because at a certain point going out and hunting beasts just isn't an effective way to train in being a master swordsman.  Fighting giant beetles doesn't require (more) technical skills, (better) feints, and so on.  Fighting other people in their quest to be a master swordsman is what matters.  You will need to find someone better than you, and feel the need to improve.  I think this is why I like the 'works as intended' in terms of weapon skill training sits well with me; if you didn't see that you weren't a master yet, and you'd already branched the weapon skill, this would never be talked about.

However, overall, I tend to agree with Lonely Hunter.  The skill-progression I remember from prior was less about trying to understand the mechanics for maximum gain.  Most people just wanted to fight more to get better, not understand which things you had to seek out and hunt to get a skill gain.  As I've noted many times, people fought each other more, and there was less emphasis on having to succeed because no one really cared if you attacked people in lawless areas except that person's friends.  People stealthed because they wanted to be stealthy, not because they needed to trigger a fail to tick up.  The ability to see when things are ticking just made a subtle-and-also-not-subtle shift in how people treated the character's journey from newly created to established professional.  It isn't like the behavior wasn't there before.  It just wasn't so...-targeted- at skill gains.

[Armaddict]

I used a spear as apprentice, as a c-elf with (relatively) shit endurance and helped a human warrior branch a weapon skill, and it was STILL a tossup at the end who would win a sparring match.

City elf combat skills are wildly underestimated because of the big 'fuck you' expectation from dwarven strength.  City and desert elf warriors are actually really really effective, and due to the bash skill only taking height into account (which needs to be changed), they actually have some tremendous advantages in terms of PvP at a certain point; they trade random reels for reliable stunlock and better pursuit ability.

[Synthesis]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, even though I'm sure I'll be shouted down again...

You don't have to resort to stupid tactics to Get Gud anymore. Y'all are operating on out of date presumptions.

source: actual experience within the last 6 months of gameplay.

Wow.

I've been playing the same game for the last 4 months, and *surprise* it's behaving exactly the way I always expected it to.  You keep making these claims, but without some kind of data to support it, it's highly questionable.  Are you claiming to have solid evidence that a strict dodge is not a requirement for a weapon skill gain? Because that is the issue, unless you're doing squirrelly shit like having your partner snort agility spice, blindfight sparring, or intentionally sparring while bashed, to nerf your offense rolls.

I've only had one long lived warrior, and he only reached journeyman. But dang, I could take on most everything I had a need to, including multiple spiders at once or a kryl.

Before that I was very keen on seeing mastery of a weapon, but after that I realized I'd be content to just have it happen naturally as the result of a long-lived and fun-to-play character. My biggest worry was having low skills and being fragile but that seemed to dry up at around 5 days played. Another player was dangerous, but I could handle carru and other things that I'd randomly run into ... meaning longer life.

Exactly.  My own findings is that if you play realistic -- take a default template as a hunter who goes out and hunts one animal every in game day -- you will move through three stages:

1. Weak.  This takes about five days to overcome.  It kind of stinks, but isn't that terrible, and a lot of fun can be had getting your ass kicked.

2. Perfect.  This happens from about 5 to 20 days, I'd say.  You get rolled now and then by a gortok, carru/gith are definitely a flee beast, but you can more or less handle 80% of the mobs out there.

3. Too Good.  Then you hit this level where nothing hurts you unless it gets lucky (with the rare 5% of beasts that you have to go out of your way to find anyway).  If you want to liven things up you have to do tricky things like wishing up (hehe) or holding things in the offhand or 'forgetting' to draw your weapon, or whatever.

This is all a PvE perspective.  My own view on PvP is that either (1) you get poisoned/locked roomed or (2) you can flee (unless merchant, I guess), so there's not much point in skilling to win at the PvP in straight combat.

You're confusing "good" with "defensively sufficient for PvE."

This is all a PvE perspective.

Trust me, it is ENTIRELY possible to die in straight-up melee PvP where one successful bash, charge, or reel is all it takes.  Whether you do 10 damage with a solid chop to the arm or 35 damage with a brutal chop to the neck is not random.  Does it matter for hunting gortoks? No.  Does it matter in PvP? HELL YES IT DOES.

My own view on PvP is that either (1) you get poisoned/locked roomed or (2) you can flee (unless merchant, I guess), so there's not much point in skilling to win at the PvP in straight combat.

Your view is clearly based on the circumstances that you've a) never been attacked by someone who was actually good and b) never attacked someone while you were actually good.

Well PVP is territory I haven't engaged in much, so I can't really say.

I've been involved in 3 pvp incidents over dozens of characters.

One I got shot up with arrows and I fell over a cliff trying to run away. *doh*
One I started and could have fled out at any time but didn't.
One I started and then fled out of.

I don't particularly feel that I was vastly overwhelmed by someone else's coded power in any of them. (Well, MAYBE the one where I ate a few fireballs but I did have the ability to get away.)

I have no way of knowing what their skillsheet looked like, but there was no "WTF PWNED" moment in my head. Which you sometimes get even on pure PK muds.

I think if you're going to be reel-locked and murderized then it probably would have happened with a carru as well as another player. I'm aware that as someone who hasn't focused on pvp I'm talking out my ass, but hey, listen to that ass go.

I've straight-up, no-poison, melee-only reel-locked and killed d-elves with a human warrior who only had "good" strength and was using sword+shield.

I've no-poison charge+reel'ed numerous people with a dwarf ranger.

Hell, I've no-poison melee-only, no-locked-doors PK'ed PCs in the 'rinth with a city-elf warrior who wasn't even all that great.

Trust me, it is possible, but you have to do work to get there, and you have to know what you're doing, because you have to do it intentionally.  It will not just "happen over time."

I used a spear as apprentice, as a c-elf with (relatively) shit endurance and helped a human warrior branch a weapon skill, and it was STILL a tossup at the end who would win a sparring match.

City elf combat skills are wildly underestimated because of the big 'fuck you' expectation from dwarven strength.  City and desert elf warriors are actually really really effective, and due to the bash skill only taking height into account (which needs to be changed), they actually have some tremendous advantages in terms of PvP at a certain point; they trade random reels for reliable stunlock and better pursuit ability.

Yeah.  Agility is king at top-tier, I don't care what anyone says.  It's also why I strongly suspect that Delirium is playing an elf, or playing with elves, because agility now has a tremendous effect (probably always did and I just wasn't paying attention).

ANYWAY

My ultimate goal is this:  the time-to-mastery curve should remain the same for weapon skills, but parries and blocks should count as failures.  If they already count as failures, the Staff should just come out and say so, so we can stop bitching about it.