Overly Concerned with Skills?

[wizturbo]

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.

Disagree with you here.  The behavior is not being driven by being able to perceive character improvements.  I do not believe there are many players who spend tens or hundreds of hours working on skills because of some obsession with seeing 'Master' next to the skill.  The behavior is driven by wanting to attain a certain power level.  To play a character that's exceptional.  Whether or not they see 'Master' next to their skill only affirms whether they're being successful at this.  Take it away, and they'll find a new measuring stick.  That new measuring stick might actually create a ton of unwanted meta behaviors.

I'm proposing that the only way to become truly exceptional (beyond having superior stats through luck) is through roleplay, rather than skill ups from hacking up gith with a bag filled with boulders. 

[Armaddict]

I'm proposing that the only way to become truly exceptional (beyond having superior stats through luck) is through roleplay, rather than skill ups from hacking up gith with a bag filled with boulders.

Well.  Proposing that they indulge in your idea of roleplay.  But guys who are out hunting consistently for an IC decade who don't engage in that version of roleplay would be on the short end of your stick, and that in no way makes them less of a roleplayer; I think you're just adding another motivation on top of a first motivation to try to make them cancel out, when the first incentive isn't truly needed as much as it's just...friendlier.  I think Nergal said earlier that instances of twinkout/abuse of code are relatively rare and dealt with.  I kind of stopped talking about that instance as a whole after that, because that's not really a topic of interesting discussion and I don't think it's what the OP was referring to.

What I'm referring to is that with the exception of branching, success/failure ratios and ability to even try are very IC-centric avenues of regarding your level, and being directly told seems to come with the side product of feeling inadequate despite good ratios.  If we shifted the branching values and had no visibility again, I think mindless grinds would take a very big backseat because you'd be removing that unconscious reward from it.  You don't get the neat little squee of 'I just hit advanced!'.

I agree, that is a neat little squee, but the nature of the neat little squee is that you want it.  If you don't get it, the incentive to do something solely for it is gone.  In the same bag, if you're trying to improve it and -can't get yourself to fail-, in one instance it's nice to never fail, and in the other it's incredibly frustrating for no good reason other than the stupid little level thing not going up when you want it to.

The behavior shift because of that neat little squee, like I said earlier, has been paradoxical (I might be misusing that) in that the behavior in each character is relatively subtle, but the behavior engaged in on a mass scale by most of the people in the game has been blatantly obvious.

Edit:  At the least, I think we seem to be for the most part in agreement throughout the thread that branching mechanics need to be evaluated.  But I don't support further complicating the skilling process to take the edge off of the incentives we provided in the first place, like stacking medications to treat side effects from previous medications all in support of an original medication that makes you feel marginally nicer.

[Case]

I still don't understand how killing animals like snakes and shit in any way makes you good with a weapon.

[Miradus]

I still don't understand how killing animals like snakes and shit in any way makes you good with a weapon.

Basic strength-building and hand/eye coordination.

It makes sense. Are you going to become a master duelist that way? No. But you'll at least build up the muscles required to swing the weapon and the skill to not chop/crush your foot. And that's already reflected in the code, I think.

[The Lonely Hunter]

It sounds like some people just want a different MUD. Making changes like some proposed is a slippery slope. This isn't a H&S. This is a unique MUD in many ways - let's not go changing that.
If you want something more grindy and skill-centric, check out TMS. If you want the experience that IS Armageddon don't try to change it into something that it has never been.

RP. Enjoy the RP. Stop doing silly crap just to "skill up". Stop being so concerned about how things work. Stop trying to win. Stop trying to capitalize on the code. Play your character in a realistic way and you |will| experience what Armageddon is all about.

Some of the game mechanics discussed here has made me cringe - when did we get to this point?

[Armaddict]

I still don't understand how killing animals like snakes and shit in any way makes you good with a weapon.

We can change it to the psychotic alley stalker who kills people for five years straight without getting caught if that removes the hold up.  It's not a case where the example is particularly important as much as the situation the example is in.

[Lizzie]

1. I'd like to see branches pop some time prior to Master. Perhaps make it so that a "branched" skill isn't able to max out, until its "root" skill has maxed out. Example:

Fletchery branches off of archery - so you get fairly good at archery - maybe as far as "advanced." and then boom - out comes fletchery onto your skills list.

BUT

No matter how much you twink up fletchery, you won't master it - til you master archery. Maybe you can't surpass the skill level of the skill it came from. So if you pop fletchery when your archery is only at jman, then you won't be able to get fletchery past jman, til you get archery to advanced. Something like that. In short: the level of the branch cannot exceed the level of its root, but the branch will occur prior to the root maxing out.

Does that make sense?

Anyway that's something I'd get behind. I do agree that having to master "random uninteresting skill" just so you can branch "skill I actually want" is frustrating. This wouldn't "solve" it but it would significantly reduce the frustration.

[Armaddict]

Some of the game mechanics discussed here has made me cringe - when did we get to this point?

Not sure if it was on this thread or another that I discussed this question.  But there was a large movement at some point where the idea of keeping code talk secret/hushed/suppressed was viewed as unfriendly to players and contributing to a systemic dominion over the game by veterans.  I don't think most veterans did it with this intent in mind, but there was a very big shift towards alleviating that appearance.

I agree that not all moves to alleviate it are necessarily good, but I also agree that there can be at least some discussion to avoid keeping people completely in the dark.  Code is the way we interact with the persistent world, as I keep saying, and there's just some nuances with it that pretty much only get learned through character death.  That's how I preferred it.  That might be too hard on others.  So instead...it gets discussed.  I'm not exactly sure where the line is aside from magick/psionics and such, but I kind of depend on moderators/staff to let me know, and that hasn't happened yet (surprisingly).

[Malken]

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.

How do you agree with everything she said if that's pretty much the only thing she said (that things have changed in the last six months) ??

[Synthesis]

It sounds like some people just want a different MUD. Making changes like some proposed is a slippery slope. This isn't a H&S. This is a unique MUD in many ways - let's not go changing that.
If you want something more grindy and skill-centric, check out TMS. If you want the experience that IS Armageddon don't try to change it into something that it has never been.

RP. Enjoy the RP. Stop doing silly crap just to "skill up". Stop being so concerned about how things work. Stop trying to win. Stop trying to capitalize on the code. Play your character in a realistic way and you |will| experience what Armageddon is all about.

Some of the game mechanics discussed here has made me cringe - when did we get to this point?

"Damn, I actually kinda suck, I should do something to get better."

"Damn, this thing I'm doing isn't working, I should probably try something else."

...is perfectly IC.

[Synthesis]

I'm proposing that the only way to become truly exceptional (beyond having superior stats through luck) is through roleplay, rather than skill ups from hacking up gith with a bag filled with boulders.

Well.  Proposing that they indulge in your idea of roleplay.  But guys who are out hunting consistently for an IC decade who don't engage in that version of roleplay would be on the short end of your stick, and that in no way makes them less of a roleplayer; I think you're just adding another motivation on top of a first motivation to try to make them cancel out, when the first incentive isn't truly needed as much as it's just...friendlier.  I think Nergal said earlier that instances of twinkout/abuse of code are relatively rare and dealt with.  I kind of stopped talking about that instance as a whole after that, because that's not really a topic of interesting discussion and I don't think it's what the OP was referring to.

What I'm referring to is that with the exception of branching, success/failure ratios and ability to even try are very IC-centric avenues of regarding your level, and being directly told seems to come with the side product of feeling inadequate despite good ratios.  If we shifted the branching values and had no visibility again, I think mindless grinds would take a very big backseat because you'd be removing that unconscious reward from it.  You don't get the neat little squee of 'I just hit advanced!'.

I agree, that is a neat little squee, but the nature of the neat little squee is that you want it.  If you don't get it, the incentive to do something solely for it is gone.  In the same bag, if you're trying to improve it and -can't get yourself to fail-, in one instance it's nice to never fail, and in the other it's incredibly frustrating for no good reason other than the stupid little level thing not going up when you want it to.

The behavior shift because of that neat little squee, like I said earlier, has been paradoxical (I might be misusing that) in that the behavior in each character is relatively subtle, but the behavior engaged in on a mass scale by most of the people in the game has been blatantly obvious.

Edit:  At the least, I think we seem to be for the most part in agreement throughout the thread that branching mechanics need to be evaluated.  But I don't support further complicating the skilling process to take the edge off of the incentives we provided in the first place, like stacking medications to treat side effects from previous medications all in support of an original medication that makes you feel marginally nicer.

I don't believe anything has really changed.

The mechanics discussion has moved from IRC to AIM to the shadowboard to the GDB.

Many of the people who are engaged in the discussion are much more experienced and have much more data to work with (when I started playing, the most experienced player possible would've had 7 years under his belt...you and I now have what...18 years apiece?).

For example...back when I started in '98...the "meta theory" was that getting hit HARD increased your base O/D much faster than an equivalent damage-point-number of nicks and grazes, so I had a friend who would go out and intentionally get pinched by bahamets (this was before the reel code went in, obviously) to train up base O/D.  Currently, the same shit goes on, except instead of "a friend of a friend who knows an Imm IRL" it's "I've been playing for 18 years and never ever branched parry on a clanned ranger, except in Salarr--when I was grinding stilt lizards like a boss every day after I bagged my 1 duskhorn."

A lot of the stuff actually worked.  Some of it still works.  Some of it was so pants-on-head retarded (rock bags, drunk sparring) that the imms made it stop working.

I don't have a problem with it.  If sparring supposedly works just as well as grinding tarantulas...guess what? Nobody else should have a problem with it, either, right?  What skin is it off your back if a dude is out grinding tarantulas while you're sparring, if the results supposedly are the same?

Well...the trick is obviously that they don't work the same, for whatever reason, and everyone who has done both for any length of time knows damn well they don't work the same.  WITH SOME VAGUE AND UNSPECIFIED POSSIBLE EXCEPTIONS, DELIRIUM

[Armaddict]

Did you mean to quote my other post? XD

[Reiloth]

It sounds like some people just want a different MUD. Making changes like some proposed is a slippery slope. This isn't a H&S. This is a unique MUD in many ways - let's not go changing that.
If you want something more grindy and skill-centric, check out TMS. If you want the experience that IS Armageddon don't try to change it into something that it has never been.

RP. Enjoy the RP. Stop doing silly crap just to "skill up". Stop being so concerned about how things work. Stop trying to win. Stop trying to capitalize on the code. Play your character in a realistic way and you |will| experience what Armageddon is all about.

Some of the game mechanics discussed here has made me cringe - when did we get to this point?

This is an attitude we (as veterans) need to consider wisely before we begin repeating it wholesale.

No, ArmageddonMUD isn't the same game it was in 1998, 2004, 2008, or even 2015. The game is evolving, changing, as the player base ages and changes. Many people who once played the game don't anymore, for reasons as simple as life passed them by, and they don't have the time, or they just aren't interested anymore.

Video game culture on a whole has also changed. When I first started playing ArmageddonMUD, there were a slew of other RP-enforced or RP-encouraged MUDs and MOOs and MUSHs with competing player bases. They're all extinct now. The MMORPGs and CRPGs and other sorts of games and consoles just swallowed people's interests in text-based gaming.

So -- We should really carefully consider before we tell people "This game isn't for you, try something else". We may start finding that we are one of those soon-to-be-extinguished RPI MUDs of yore.

The solution that I see here requires figuring out why people are skill-centric, and if/how that harms the game's RP environment. Comparing the game environment of 2016 to any sort of aggrandized memory of the past 'good ol' days' of ArmageddonMUD is like remembering how good sex was with your high-school girlfriend. Just as with that girlfriend, the 'good ol days' ain't coming back any time soon. Even if they did, they wouldn't look the same, would they? Most of the people we played with in the 'good ol days' don't play anymore, aren't around, aren't interested in ArmageddonMUD. You can't change the past, you can't make the past the present, and we certainly aren't going to predict the future.

So -- As a rebuttal to your question -- How do you see us as a community reconciling with newer players that come from games that aren't archaic about how code is presented to the player base? How do we encourage them to put RP first? How can we possibly modify how skills are gained or trained in order to facilitate RP over skill grinding?

These are the kinds of things I find to be helpful questions. I hate to say it, but telling people to go play a different game will only yield one result -- They take you up on the offer and don't play ArmageddonMUD. How does that help us?

Sure, the game isn't for everyone. People figure that out and stop playing, or never get started. But it's a crap message for a Veteran to send to new players. I've done it myself, but I really think we should stop it, collectively. It's a MUD, not a MUSH. This means that RP, especially on an RPI, is incredibly important, but skills are not to be ignored and completely disregarded. It's a part of the game -- And just because you play the game one way, doesn't delegitimize the way that other people play it as well.

[Reiloth]

I still don't understand how killing animals like snakes and shit in any way makes you good with a weapon.

We can change it to the psychotic alley stalker who kills people for five years straight without getting caught if that removes the hold up.  It's not a case where the example is particularly important as much as the situation the example is in.

This is very true, and the more I read it, the more true it is.

People are going to continue to do ridiculous shit to 'git gud' until the paradigm changes. Until we can get better at skills by (a) simply existing or (b) succeeding at using the skills, the 'failure' platform will create unrealistic meta-game play. People want to achieve something, people want to use useful people in plots, and that's just the way the cookie has always crumbled.

We can pray it away, we can stick our heads in the sand repeating RP as a mantra, but the simple answer is: the way skills are trained and gained doesn't facilitate RP. It facilitates meta-game theory. Change the way skills are gained and trained, and you change the paradigm.

[Armaddict]

I can't tell if you're reading that part right.

That was me responding to Case because I assumed she was talking about my hunter who just kept huntin' story, and how they'd never reach mastery under wizturbo's idea.

I was using it to illustrate why I think skill levels being invisible again would be a good thing.  Not because it would eliminate all of such behavior, but because it would remove that little 'reward' for making skill gains a focus, and making constant success more satisfying than frustrating.

[John]

I agree Armaddict. But I doubt the playerbase would ever accept skill levels being removed.

[Armaddict]

There are/have been lots of things done that the playerbase would never accept under the banner of rational, directional thinking for the benefit of the game.

[Lutagar]

That awkward moment when you realize most people think wanting to take advantage of your chosen guild's strength is twinking.

If wanting [master] skill_fightan as a guild_warrior is bad (and lets be honest the caps are the only reason play to this otherwise underwhelming guild) then it kind of rasies the question of why we're using such a system to begin with.

[Armaddict]

That awkward moment when you realize most people think wanting to take advantage of your chosen guild's strength is twinking.

If wanting [master] skill_fightan as a guild_warrior is bad (and lets be honest the caps are the only reason play to this otherwise underwhelming guild) then it kind of rasies the question of why we're using such a system to begin with.

Eh, that's not the impression I meant to give, man.  I'm Mr. Codelover over here, and I play skill-oriented characters.  That's not the equivocation I'm making at all, and no one should have that impression.

What I dislike is the idea that people are using that [advanced] or [master] to determine when they're ready to try things, rather than success and failure and use of the skill.  People as a whole tend to keep really safe until they see that thing happen at this point, and/or get really upset when they're too good at a skill to improve it (Unless it leads to a branch, in which case the frustration is totally understandable).

No way shape or form am I saying you're a twink for being skill oriented as well.

[Inks]

This is one of those times I agree with Armaddict here. Players are generally pretty mature about skill failurs EVEN STEALTH. I have played some sucessful pcs and I don't think the pro code players here are particularly in the majority. Code is very important. Skills doesn't make your pc. Rp first code second. Don't play to win for instance assassinate someone and then hire a room to wait out crim code. Have fun.

[Lizzie]

I agree Armaddict. But I doubt the playerbase would ever accept skill levels being removed.

Armaddict isn't talking about removing skill levels. He's talking about *being able to see* skill levels. We used to not be able to see them. The particular variety of focus on skills this thread is about, presently, reflects the ability to see "advanced" and "jman" and "novice" and so forth. If you revert back to not being able to see them anymore, we'll reduce (not eliminate, but reduce) this particular focus on skills.

No one ever whined about not being able to function at anything less than jman - back when no one was able to see what level of skill they were at.

[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.

How do you agree with everything she said if that's pretty much the only thing she said (that things have changed in the last six months) ??

I... checked back and it seems I got threads mixed up, which happens when I quickly skim the GDB from my tablet.  I'm getting old and blind.

I generally tend to agree with Delirium on most everything, though. Same with wizturbo and sometimes Lizzie. They tend to say what's on my mind much better than I could.

Time for my afternoon nap!

[Synthesis]

I agree Armaddict. But I doubt the playerbase would ever accept skill levels being removed.

Armaddict isn't talking about removing skill levels. He's talking about *being able to see* skill levels. We used to not be able to see them. The particular variety of focus on skills this thread is about, presently, reflects the ability to see "advanced" and "jman" and "novice" and so forth. If you revert back to not being able to see them anymore, we'll reduce (not eliminate, but reduce) this particular focus on skills.

No one ever whined about not being able to function at anything less than jman - back when no one was able to see what level of skill they were at.

This is not true.

Every player of a warrior was complaining about not being able to branch advanced weapons in 2005-2006, long before skill levels were visible.

Those of us who managed to do it had the same complaints:  you had to resort to silly things to get over the plateau, and it was virtually impossible to skill up the advanced skill once you branched it, so it was pointless that they have higher skill caps.

[Inks]

Warrior branch is an exception yeah. I would argue that code changes make brancing well possible now though.

[Riev]

And again, while it certainly IS possible, there are still some ridiculous things you need to go through to GET the branch, and then you need to do it all over again with the branched weapons but NOW you have an inflated offense score.

I really think Offense/Defense and fighting skills are the only "skills" people are overly concerned with, and honestly I haven't seen many who focus SO much on them that it ruins my gameplay. There are a few that make me think "What have you done to be so effective, you've barely been around <x> time" but... it doesn't affect MY gameplay other than "avoid that guy he might be a magicker or some Templar pet".