Overly Concerned with Skills?

[Miradus]

I have noticed that my characters with high agility get a couple of million swings compared to my high strength/low agility characters. Could that number of swings simply end up in a statistically greater number of generated misses?

I've always wanted to have a high agility ranger/protector combo just for the survivability.

[Delirium]

I'm sure I'll be shouted down again...

It's like magic!

[Lutagar]

I have noticed that my characters with high agility get a couple of million swings compared to my high strength/low agility characters. Could that number of swings simply end up in a statistically greater number of generated misses?

I've always wanted to have a high agility ranger/protector combo just for the survivability.

I'm just waiting for someone to make a magickal dworf called sanic with a mutation that turns his skin blue coupled with a focus to become the fastest.

[nauta]

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.

Some of you may also know that a Parried attack gives no skill-gain benefit to either the attacker or the defender. It isn't a failed attack, so the attacker's weapon skills and offense do not raise; nor is it a failed defense, so the defender's defense remains unchanged.

This statement isn't actually true. A successful parry is a success for the person being attacked and a failure for the person attacking, as one would logically expect.

Which is funny because in that very thread you go on to claim that Nergal (staff) is wrong.  So clearly coming out and stating it is not enough for you.

[Nergal]

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.

I've said that parries and blocks count as failures in the past, when talking about the offense/defense changes that happened a while back. If I recall correctly, you and others rejected that assertion at the time.

Your commentary on weapon skills is fair and something staff can look at more closely.

[Molten Heart]

.

[Akaramu]

It's like magic!

I'm listening! In fact, I haven't posted in this thread because I agree with pretty much everything you said. 

Except your experience of the past 6 months... I'm still waiting to get back into the game so I wouldn't know what / if anything has changed.

[Nergal]

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.

I've said that parries and blocks count as failures in the past, when talking about the offense/defense changes that happened a while back. If I recall correctly, you and others rejected that assertion at the time.

Your commentary on weapon skills is fair and something staff can look at more closely.

Just to be clear, blocks and parries count as weapon skill failures, specifically?

Having your attack blocked, parried, or dodged all count as skill failures. A skill failure covers many skills involved in the calculation of the attack. That includes weapon skills, combat skills, and offense. It is possible that none of these skills will go up on a single failure. It is possible that all of them will. Usually though, at least one will.

[Reiloth]

To answer the OP directly, or more directly --

I think skills would matter less if they were less of a grind to achieve. As I stated in my 'casual play' thread, people (myself included) sometimes would rather turn on Dragon Age: Inquisition or some other game where you can be rad and skilled and the 'git gud' part of the game is only a few hours long.

ArmageddonMUD is an entirely different beast -- Some of my favorite PCs i've played have been only marginally talented at what they do. I personally don't think skills are the 'end all be all' for a character. However -- here are a few things I think could help.

1. Change the 'teach' function to be a skill. Allow people with high wisdom, and with talent in a skill, to be the most proficient teachers. Allow for the apprentice to journeyman to master experience to be possible in Zalanthas, as it was possible and done for many hundreds of years in Real Life. Have caveats attached -- You can only use the 'teach' skill once a day, hell even once every few days. Depending on the student's wisdom, have the 'teach' only give them one or two points, or several, or none. Cap out the 'teachability' to Journeyman in most or all skills.

2. Allow people to gain in skills through successes. Depending on the person's wisdom and proficiency in the skill, successes count for less as you get closer to 'master', but still count for something over time. Tortall -- Nothing against you at all, I can tell you as a craftsman working in art restoration and previously in guitar lutherie, you most -definitely- learn from mistakes, but you also just as definitely learn from successes. I've fine tuned my dexterity and talents through the things i've done right much more often than by the things i've done wrong. It's sort of a fallacy to think 'If I make a mistake, I will do better next time.' Unless you have someone showing you why you fucked up so bad, you tend to keep doing it the same way until you personally discover a different approach or you just give up and have the 'master craftsman' do it.

3. Have the ability to train skills without actualizing them, akin to the 'nil' reach for Magic. This would be for skills like backstab, where the 'twinkery' involved is just plain old necessary to get the skill to any good place of usability. I can't think of anyone who wants to hire a 'p good assassin', considering if the assassin fails, they are pretty much boned, and their contractor is pretty much boned. No wonder assassinations are as rare as coffee. Sure, they happen, but in apartments. Exciting! Riveting!

4. Have combat be more deadly than it already is. If two incredibly equal people (say a day 1 merchant, and another day 1 merchant) start stabbing each other, make it brutal and nasty, not absolutely mind-numbing and impossible. If normal people could hurt each other without days upon days of training, and if those who do train have no problem fending people off without training, but also end up having brutal combat with those who are trained...Gosh, I just think it would be more thrilling. Nothing more exciting (See: Sarcasm) than witnessing two incredibly well trained warriors fight each other. It's all kicks and bashes, you know, like cavemen. No nuance, no 'fighting styles', nothing of that sort.

I think we're far too used to being able to get away, get back to the city, get into an alley, hide perfectly, escape conflict, and so on. If combat were more realistic, if wounds were possible, slowing people from running, bleeding to death, these sorts of things, not only would we have more PC turnover, but the world would just seem brutish and short. Just the way I like it.

More to the point -- If skills mattered less in killing people, you would see people care less about skills.

[Miradus]

Up yours, Reiloth. I'm not going to be your fanboy.

(Muttering under breath) But yeah. I kind of love all of those suggestions.

[wizturbo]

Lots of posts here, can't say I read them all.   But I wanted to offer my two cents which are hopefully not redundant with too many other posts.

1.  It's too much of a black box on whether or not you've learned something in a given play session.  This leads to people over training because they're not sure whether or not they improved.  Experienced players may not think this way, but I guarantee you many do.

Proposed solution:  Echo when learning occurs.  Something like, "You feel as though you've learned more about how to use slashing weapons."   

2.  It's also a black box on how long you need to wait to improve again.

Proposed solution:  Set the timer to mirror the in-game day cycle.  All skill-up opportunities reset at dawn, regardless of your wisdom stat.  Instead you learn more from a skill up with higher wisdom.

3.  "Masters" at non-combat skills in Armageddon are far too ubiquitous.  This creates a sense of needing to twink up your skills in order to be considered useful.

4.  Some players want to play amazing, bad asses at their particular field.  So they train like fiends to get to that level, as roleplaying will not help them achieve the ultimate vision they have for their character. 

Proposed solution to 3 & 4:  Make it impossible to get to the highest skill levels through conventional training alone.  Require specialized training to reach truly epic skill levels, training that often requires roleplay or social elements to attain.  (Repeated applications of the teach command.  Either from a PC, or an animated NPC.)  There's no reason to fight blindfolded in a cave with a sack of rocks on your back.  You're wasting your time.  Go spend your time trying to get into the Tor Academy so you can receive training from their Weaponmaster, or join House Kurac because one of their active Sergeant's is known to be a legendary archer.  The same should apply to non-combat skills too.  Want to become a Master weapon crafter?  You aren't going to get there by chipping away at obsidian on your own.  You'd better find another PC to teach you, or join an organization that's known to have those kinds of people.

Certain skills will require tweaking so that 'Advanced' covers more applications, given the new rarity of 'Master'.

'Masters' of a given skill need to understand that they have a responsibility to use 'teach' only when sufficient roleplay is done.  Though honestly, I don't expect this to be abused very much.  If you're one of the few rare 'Masters' at a given skill, are you really going to teach just anybody?  You're devaluing yourself.  You should make them work for it!

[Reiloth]

Lots of posts here, can't say I read them all.   But I wanted to offer my two cents which are hopefully not redundant with too many other posts.

1.  It's too much of a black box on whether or not you've learned something in a given play session.  This leads to people over training because they're not sure whether or not they improved.  Experienced players may not think this way, but I guarantee you many do.

Proposed solution:  Echo when learning occurs.  Something like, "You feel as though you've learned more about how to use slashing weapons."   

2.  It's also a black box on how long you need to wait to improve again.

Proposed solution:  Set the timer to mirror the in-game day cycle.  All skill-up opportunities reset at dawn, regardless of your wisdom stat.  Instead you learn more from a skill up with higher wisdom.

3.  "Masters" at non-combat skills in Armageddon are far too ubiquitous.  This creates a sense of needing to twink up your skills in order to be considered useful.

4.  Some players want to play amazing, bad asses at their particular field.  So they train like fiends to get to that level, as roleplaying will not help them achieve the ultimate vision they have for their character. 

Proposed solution to 3 & 4:  Make it impossible to get to the highest skill levels through conventional training alone.  Require specialized training to reach truly epic skill levels, training that often requires roleplay or social elements to attain.  There's no reason to fight blindfolded in a cave with a sack of rocks on your back.  You're wasting your time.  Go spend your time trying to get into the Tor Academy so you can receive training from their Weaponmaster, or join House Kurac because one of their active Sergeant's is known to be a legendary archer.  The same should apply to non-combat skills too.  Want to become a Master weapon crafter?  You aren't going to get there by chipping away at obsidian on your own.  You'd better find another PC to teach you, or join an organization that's known to have those kinds of people.

Certain skills will require tweaking so that 'Advanced' covers more applications, given the new rarity of 'Master'.

Agreed!

[Reiloth]

Up yours, Reiloth. I'm not going to be your fanboy.

(Muttering under breath) But yeah. I kind of love all of those suggestions.

Join the Dark Side...The power is unimaginable...

[Armaddict]

Or...you know...go back to where 'mastery' was determined by how good you were at it, rather than a label that shows up that lets you know you're not there yet.

They both accomplish the same thing.  One of those is drastically easier to accomplish than the other.

[Bahliker]

Yeah I love the idea of making the process of adding a point to a skill more dynamic and way more mysterious. On the game side of things, if you make it factor in enough unexpected elements, even the most hardcore mechanics detectives will have no idea how to twink out except just to play the game. On the rp side, the fact is that "learning" is really superduper complex. How is learning to juggle different from learning calculus? How about learning a new language or learning all the different things that go into swordfighting? It's almost never just through failures -- that's just the quick and dirty game shortcut that made the most sense when they put this thing together.

One could argue that if failures and successes both had varying chances to raise a skill, a player would be more inclined to constantly spam that skill, succeeding and failing over and over, and nothing would really change. Well, remove this whole notion of a wisdom based "timer" and have the +1 of a skill rely on a coder's nightmare of broad conditions. Aim for the end result of, "if you use a skill, you will gradually get better, having an instructor is best, if you overdo it you stop learning entirely because you reach a mental block."
Haven't you all ever been trying to learn to do something better, and you just can't? You try and try and are close to tears and you just can't do it? Usually it takes a little break, then you go back to it and all that practicing you did sank in over a few days and you finally turn that corner. At least, you think so. Then you go back to it again and the next big thing you learn ruins all the progress you made and you feel like you're back to square one.

That's the feeling I think the code should simulate in a perfect Armageddon. I know that would be a beast of a project so don't anybody start with that complex code nonsense. We're not setting the 2017 agenda here, just talking.

[wizturbo]

Or...you know...go back to where 'mastery' was determined by how good you were at it, rather than a label that shows up that lets you know you're not there yet.

They both accomplish the same thing.  One of those is drastically easier to accomplish than the other.

There's a very valuable feedback loop involved with showing people their skill levels.  I find it extremely satisfying to see a skill has improved from one level or another...  It's stupid and arbitrary I know, but I feel it anyway.  I think many people do. 

Also it's helpful to gauge how to roleplay a situation.

[Armaddict]

I find it extremely satisfying to see a skill has improved from one level or another...  It's stupid and arbitrary I know, but I feel it anyway.

It's also a fundamental driving force behind the behavior discussed in this thread, and an implantation of OOC direction into IC behavior, and you've just proposed a series of rather unnecessary changes to maintain the visibility, but then try to change the behavior the visibility brings.  The visibility itself, and the satisfaction you get from seeing rather than experiencing the improvement, is at least in large part contributing to what the OP was bringing up.

Make it so that the success/fail ratio is more important to the player than the official sponsored 'level' they're at, and make branch levels more reasonable, and while the behavior won't disappear, it will definitely fall away because as has been noted many times, grinding isn't fun.  The driving force behind it is that they know it's still being effective, and they haven't reached master yet.

Make branching skills occur closer to low-advanced or high-journeyman for most skills, and people will gauge things a lot more based off of how good they think they are rather than 'I haven't reached that level yet.'

Also it's helpful to gauge how to roleplay a situation.

Uhhh...kind of.  You're kind of speaking in terms of having an invisible sensei whispering in your ear what color belt you have, in game.  I think far more meaingful and real roleplay comes from 'I've done it a lot and I do a pretty good job so that I rely on it' than a thrown together IC justification of what breaks down to 'I'm still only journeyman.'

[wizturbo]

Uhhh...kind of.  You're kind of speaking in terms of having an invisible sensei whispering in your ear what color belt you have, in game.  I think far more meaingful and real roleplay comes from 'I've done it a lot and I do a pretty good job so that I rely on it' than a thrown together IC justification of what breaks down to 'I'm still only journeyman.'

In real life, you have ton of empirical evidence to draw from on how good you are at something.  Inputs that just aren't present in a MUD.

Take crafting for instance.  A Master level crafter makes the exact same 'a pair of leather boots' as the apprentice level crafter.  It's identical.  A Master's boots would look better, be more comfortable, and waste less materials building it. 

That 'Master' level crafter likely did it in a fraction of the time.  Crafting times in Armageddon are a total joke, so this doesn't apply.

The 'Master' would be able to complete that task while hung over, holding a conversation, and keeping track of three other projects they're working on at the same time.  The apprentice would struggle.

The code in Armageddon doesn't reflect these nuances.  Sure, you could get a spreadsheet out and keep track of how many boots you made successfully without a failure, and compare it to the other crafter, and determine you're the better of the two...  That isn't exactly realistic though.

[John]

Or...you know...go back to where 'mastery' was determined by how good you were at it, rather than a label that shows up that lets you know you're not there yet.

They both accomplish the same thing.  One of those is drastically easier to accomplish than the other.

This is the disconnect for some people: Being good use to mean beating up everyone else and was achievable within 1 IC year of regular training. Now being good means getting Advanced or Master on your skill list. This is significantly harder to achieve through legitimate role play.

Note: Based on what people have said in this thread, everyone here engages in legitimate role play. This is not an attack on anyone here.

[Armaddict]

Uhhh...kind of.  You're kind of speaking in terms of having an invisible sensei whispering in your ear what color belt you have, in game.  I think far more meaingful and real roleplay comes from 'I've done it a lot and I do a pretty good job so that I rely on it' than a thrown together IC justification of what breaks down to 'I'm still only journeyman.'

In real life, you have ton of empirical evidence to draw from on how good you are at something.  Inputs that just aren't present in a MUD.

Take crafting for instance.  A Master level crafter makes the exact same 'a pair of leather boots' as the apprentice level crafter.  It's identical.  A Master's boots would look better, be more comfortable, and waste less materials building it. 

That 'Master' level crafter likely did it in a fraction of the time.  Crafting times in Armageddon are a total joke, so this doesn't apply.

The 'Master' would be able to complete that task while hung over, holding a conversation, and keeping track of three other projects they're working on at the same time.  The apprentice would struggle.

The code in Armageddon doesn't reflect these nuances.  Sure, you could get a spreadsheet out and keep track of how many boots you made successfully without a failure, and compare it to the other crafter, and determine you're the better of the two...  That isn't exactly realistic though.

...what does that have to do with promoting or not promoting skill-progression-based behavior for mastery?  The master makes more things and doesn't fail at making boots.  Someone who doesn't fail at making those boots and makes more impressive boots is probably more comfortable at making boots.

Edit:  Which isn't to say that I don't agree that a master makes better boots, and knows that he makes better boots.  But breaking it down to a single pair of boots being the determining factor that you should be told you're a master, versus all of the other indicators that you receive through use of the skill doesn't seem to illustrate a meaningful point.

[bardlyone]

Lots of posts here, can't say I read them all.   But I wanted to offer my two cents which are hopefully not redundant with too many other posts.

1.  It's too much of a black box on whether or not you've learned something in a given play session.  This leads to people over training because they're not sure whether or not they improved.  Experienced players may not think this way, but I guarantee you many do.

Proposed solution:  Echo when learning occurs.  Something like, "You feel as though you've learned more about how to use slashing weapons."   

2.  It's also a black box on how long you need to wait to improve again.

Proposed solution:  Set the timer to mirror the in-game day cycle.  All skill-up opportunities reset at dawn, regardless of your wisdom stat.  Instead you learn more from a skill up with higher wisdom.

Both of thee I fully back and agree with.

3.  "Masters" at non-combat skills in Armageddon are far too ubiquitous.  This creates a sense of needing to twink up your skills in order to be considered useful.

4.  Some players want to play amazing, bad asses at their particular field.  So they train like fiends to get to that level, as roleplaying will not help them achieve the ultimate vision they have for their character. 

Proposed solution to 3 & 4:  Make it impossible to get to the highest skill levels through conventional training alone.  Require specialized training to reach truly epic skill levels, training that often requires roleplay or social elements to attain.  (Repeated applications of the teach command.  Either from a PC, or an animated NPC.)  There's no reason to fight blindfolded in a cave with a sack of rocks on your back.  You're wasting your time.  Go spend your time trying to get into the Tor Academy so you can receive training from their Weaponmaster, or join House Kurac because one of their active Sergeant's is known to be a legendary archer.  The same should apply to non-combat skills too.  Want to become a Master weapon crafter?  You aren't going to get there by chipping away at obsidian on your own.  You'd better find another PC to teach you, or join an organization that's known to have those kinds of people.

Certain skills will require tweaking so that 'Advanced' covers more applications, given the new rarity of 'Master'.

'Masters' of a given skill need to understand that they have a responsibility to use 'teach' only when sufficient roleplay is done.  Though honestly, I don't expect this to be abused very much.  If you're one of the few rare 'Masters' at a given skill, are you really going to teach just anybody?  You're devaluing yourself.  You should make them work for it!

I can't back these without a change in policy. Period. Well, success ratios for #3, and policy for #4.

Master crafting NICE things already requires this via rp/bacground/clan stuff, go read the help file. Given that you have to be 'master' to even make a new recipe/craft for a crappy scrap of leather and length of bone to make a new type of torch, 'master weapon crafter' doesn't JUST mean 'able to make OMGBBQsauce!!1! deathsword' it also means being able to fire blacken or add a frickin' strap of leather to a crappy sword that already exists, due to OOC mechanics and policy stuff, I would yes, have problems with this.

[Dunetrade55]

When i was playing a merchant c-elf, I actually DID seek out mentors, going so far as to sneak long, drawn out lessons on the sly from a famous Salarri armorsmith in hardening leather. Having (master) in your skill list doesn't make you a real master. You can RP it that way, but where's the fun in that? I mean, you're only cheating yourself. I don't feel mastery needs to have restrictions on it. Is it annoying to see a know-it-all geek mad-scientist in the game who hasn't robbed noble libraries to get so smart? Yeah, very. But I feel if it's being overly abused then a player complaint is in order.

[Armaddict]

Note: Based on what people have said in this thread, everyone here engages in legitimate role play. This is not an attack on anyone here.

I think Armageddon as a whole has absolutely stellar roleplayers.  If anyone doubts that, run into some other role-play enforced games...there are others, but not many, that come remotely close.  So I think this above quote should be +1'd on principle alone in the case the differences in some opinions or approaches make anyone feel attacked.

[wizturbo]

I can't back these without a change in policy. Period. Well, success ratios for #3, and policy for #4.

Yeah, I agree.  That's what I meant by:

Certain skills will require tweaking so that 'Advanced' covers more applications, given the new rarity of 'Master'.

[Synthesis]

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.

I've said that parries and blocks count as failures in the past, when talking about the offense/defense changes that happened a while back. If I recall correctly, you and others rejected that assertion at the time.

Your commentary on weapon skills is fair and something staff can look at more closely.

Okay, yeah, I forgot you said that.

Here's my problem with it (and it stems primarily from dual wield, not from weapon skills).

I have NEVER branched parry on an assassin or ranger while in the Byn or any other sparring-dominant clan, even after several years of training.  I got -really- close with a dwarf assassin with trashy agility when that half-elf Hawk was a Trooper, but I eventually reached the point where he could only parry my off-hand.  I eventually branched parry when I quit the Byn, went north, and got a whole bunch of solid dodges off of tembos.

On the other hand, I branched parry -really- fast as an indie assassin (fairly recently) by going out and getting solid dual wield dodges from iridescent jozhals and tarantulas (although I eventually branched from fucking around with some dumbass snake).  I mean...it's like the difference between 10 days played to branch and 15 days played to branch (after quitting sparring).

I've never stuck with a clan (and survived--thanks RPTs) long enough to put a weapon skill to the test, so I'm mostly assuming that weapon skills work the same way as dual wield.  On the other hand, as with the old thread that got locked, the fact that I can, in 4 or 5 days (I forget the exact number, now) surpass someone else's 15 or 20 day mark with a weapon skill (because they stayed in the Byn or whatever) by grinding on high-agility critters that can actually dodge REALLY ought to make y'all take a hard look at whether what you THINK is happening is actually happening.

The numbers just don't add up, dude.  Something is either a) not working or b) dodges are SO MUCH BETTER than parries and blocks that it looks like parries and blocks don't work.