Overly Concerned with Skills?

[Armaddict]

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

Every player of every class, old and new, have had to whine about lack of ability to make a skill branch and the things they had to go through to make it pop.  I acknowledged and agreed with this earlier in the thread, but I don't think mechanics of skill progression need to be jostled around to fix it.

Just make everything branching come out much earlier.  While still failing, even.  We've put a lot of importance with most skills on branching at master, and I think throughout the thread we've kind of agreed that there's no real reason to keep it that way.  For me, that includes weapon skills.  I've been saying in a lot of threads that I agree warrior weapon skills should be easier to attain.  Likely still take a long time if mechanics work the way they're described, but earlier (i.e. early to mid advanced, rather than master.)

[Synthesis]

That's fine, but the slow-gain cat is already out of the bag.

There is no experienced player who will think, "well, I can kill a gith, so I guess I can quit training now!"

[Armaddict]

Again, agreed, which is how it often was before, too.  It should be noted from my examples that I don't think hunters will stop hunting, warriors will stop warrioring, thieves will stop thieving, etc, just because they started succeeding so much.  The opposite, actually.  They'll do it for their living, they'll depend on it.  But the 'training it up stage' should fade out a lot earlier, naturally, over time.

But I think having it shoved in your face that you're not -really- that gud yet provided a lot of incentive for people to focus harder on it, and feel really frustrated when skills weren't failing for them.  This purely about removing that added incentive for 'Goddammit, I -still- have to grind this out?  I'm done with it, it never fails, and I still haven't (gotten master)/(branched that skill).  Some people are continuing to do things, and tempted to twink, well beyond the point of enjoyment for those motivations.  It's arbitrary, unneeded goals that are also just so damn sensible to aim for, in the current form.

With that away again, and branches coming earlier, it really does turn into a 'Am I maxxed yet?  I don't think so, but hot damn I kick everything's ass.  I haven't been seen in ages, I must have hide mastery now.  I'm selling my services at this shit and telling people I'm the best damn archer in the known.'

[Dunetrade55]

I agree with Armaddict that branching levels could stand to be reduced, where those skills branch, precisely, could be looked at for guilds and subguilds across the board, my list of priorities among the mundane classes for looking at where things branch would be thus:

1) Parry. Hands down this survivability skill is one of the most irritating to get to. A temp fix would be to provide a zero-karma protector-light subguild, or just give guard subguild jman capped parry (although that may be too much since they get subdue)
2) Stealth skills. Ease the burden on stealthies a smidge to branch critical skills
3) Perception skills.
4) Manipulation skills
5) Combat skills
6) Weapon skills
7) Crafting skills (If you know what you're doing, you can branch these semi-reliably and still make some coin in the process, the one exception is the merchant skill that shall not be named, we all know which one that is though, I have a reccomendation that would probably require the request tool to be specific, but I'd lower it a tier and have it pop at the same time as a related skill, instead of as a result of it)

I'm not really that concerned about advanced weapon skills. They seem more of a prestige thing to me, a status symbol of sorts. I know I've seen them used several times, while powerful, they should still likely be difficult to branch, but toning down the level at which they can be branched a tad, while making them a little less rare, they'd still be difficult to get to due to the slow nature of weapon skillups.

To counter something someone said, I wouldn't say I'm "experienced", certainly not "leet", but I am one of those players that once I realize I can hold my own against some of the more dangerous beasties out there without too much cause for concern, will turn my back on training for skillups because I get tired of a training regime. If I do any training at that point it's usually simply to help allies gain their critical skills. This is why I hardly ever take a Trooper stripe in the Byn, for example. I'm not here to be the very best, like no one ever was. I'm simply here to be moderately scary, of a rather considerable threat-level, to be an obstacle to the progression of certain plots and to aide the progression of others. If I lose because some twink comes out of the woodworks at this point, well, sad-face, but that's how it goes...

Of course, a lone twink is going to have a significantly more difficult time dealing with the army of minions I've build up while they've been twinking their arse off to build those skills to optimal level.

[Armaddict]

I agree with Armaddict that branching levels could stand to be reduced

While I'm very vocal about skill level visibility, that's because it's been something I've talked about from the moment that the visibility was put in.  There were lots of us who kind of anticipated big behavior shifts about it, and were vocal about it.  Some told us not to worry about it, some told us it was worth it for friendly factor.

But the above quote is the really likely thing to truly take into account.  I'd be overjoyed if we took out/toned down visibility of skill levels, but if only the branching part came out of this...that's still progress towards my overall goal of removing ooc-factored motivation for the -endless- grind.

People will never stop training.  But they won't make it into a chore if there's not a lot fruit being given for their mind-numbing labor.  Or if it's at least invisible fruit that you either have or don't have when the unforeseen famine comes.

[Synthesis]

I feel like eliminating skill level visibility would disadvantage newer players with respect to older players, because older players have years of data now to correlate in-game practical ability to skill level, whether it's visible or not.

A noob will say, "I can kill a tembo, I'm good." A vet will say, "I can kill a tembo, but I can't land 3 consecutive neck shots yet, so I'm probably only high jman/low advanced."

And I disagree that other skills get grinded like weapons and O/D.  Maybe backstab, ride, and archery require some tricks to get those last few points, but everything else is pretty easy to max via general use, as far as I can remember off the top of my head.  Now, sure, noobs who don't know how it works and what the expected time frame is might get frustrated, but everyone else knows that if you use it often, it'll take 5-7 days played, generally, unless you're using the "trick" to keep your displayed playtime low.

[whitt]

And I disagree that other skills get grinded like weapons and O/D.  Maybe backstab, ride, and archery require some tricks to get those last few points, but everything else is pretty easy to max via general use as far as I can remember off the top of my head.

See, maybe there's a terminology problem.  Folks talking about Combat Skills are speaking of "grind" in terms of RL hours/days/weeks to get from Novice to Master.  Because the Branched skill doesn't matter to them.  Folks talking about, well, every other skill in the game are talking about the IG "grind" through materials and time to get to the next skill, because the skill because used may not even be important to that character's concept, but it is somehow magickally locked behind the first skill.

Grind doesn't just account for time.  It accounts for effort too. 

Dear Merchant, why are you going outside the gates, every day, looking for rocks? Well, if I don't?  I won't ever be able to X.  Is Grind.  You're just doing it to get to the next thing and you're not doing it for RP reasons.  The concept of the character is not a "grebber got good", but you can't get there without... grinding...

I second (third? fourth?) Armaddict.  Drop the Branch point from (assumption follows) 90+% of max in the skill to 75+% of max in the skill.  Folks that have that desire to see Master pop will still grind for it.  Others will just get on with playing with the skill they actually wanted their character to know.  I think the truly odd behavior begins when a PC is at the point where they don't fail regularly, wouldn't care that they don't fail regularly, but know they must fail to get to the next skill.

[Miradus]

I enjoy a degree of grinding. I enjoy going out and getting the materials to craft with. I enjoy working my way through stockpiles of those same goods for financial gain and skill achievement.

I'm not real sure what some of you want. Seems like some want all game mechanics obscured and we just be given a basic ">" for a prompt. Other seem to want to be loaded with a character who has all the skills already branched and ready to play.

I'm okay with grinding to get where I want to be. Getting good for pvp? It's such a miniscule part of the game I don't know that I'm going to focus on it, but if I did, I'd accept a grind there too. After all, any opponent I've got is going to go through the same grind.

[Synthesis]

And I disagree that other skills get grinded like weapons and O/D.  Maybe backstab, ride, and archery require some tricks to get those last few points, but everything else is pretty easy to max via general use as far as I can remember off the top of my head.

See, maybe there's a terminology problem.  Folks talking about Combat Skills are speaking of "grind" in terms of RL hours/days/weeks to get from Novice to Master.  Because the Branched skill doesn't matter to them.  Folks talking about, well, every other skill in the game are talking about the IG "grind" through materials and time to get to the next skill, because the skill because used may not even be important to that character's concept, but it is somehow magickally locked behind the first skill.

Grind doesn't just account for time.  It accounts for effort too. 

Dear Merchant, why are you going outside the gates, every day, looking for rocks? Well, if I don't?  I won't ever be able to X.  Is Grind.  You're just doing it to get to the next thing and you're not doing it for RP reasons.  The concept of the character is not a "grebber got good", but you can't get there without... grinding...

I second (third? fourth?) Armaddict.  Drop the Branch point from (assumption follows) 90+% of max in the skill to 75+% of max in the skill.  Folks that have that desire to see Master pop will still grind for it.  Others will just get on with playing with the skill they actually wanted their character to know.  I think the truly odd behavior begins when a PC is at the point where they don't fail regularly, wouldn't care that they don't fail regularly, but know they must fail to get to the next skill.

The time and effort it takes to get from 75% vs 90% for most skills is so minimal that you'd barely notice it.

I'm not ignoring the "grind" there.  I'm saying the "grind" there is paltry.  If you're really complaining about mastering a crafting skill...damn...do you even Arm, bro?  I mastered a 3rd-tier branched crafting skill (e.g. mastered THREE skills) from novice in the time it took disarm to go from apprentice to jman, dude.  I branched and just about mastered every skill on a merchant who NEVER LEFT ALLANAK in about 20 days played.  With a clanned d-elf merchant, I compiled a list of almost 1,200 craftable objects in 11 days played.  A 20 day clanned warrior is just barely hitting its stride.  Complaining about merchants in the context of a "grinding" discussion is pretty weak.  Like...merchants are not a real grind, man, unless you just have terrible difficulty remaining alive for 10 days.

Moving the branch point wouldn't -matter- for anyone who knows anything about the game, because the point is not "to branch," because branching is simple for most skills if you have the chops to survive for 10 days played on a regular basis.  The point of training a skill, for the most part, is to be -functional- with it.

The problem with "functional" on Armageddon, is that, in a permadeath setting with binary (pass/fail) checks, "functional" usually means "absolute minimal failures" which means "maxed."  Nobody who knows wtf they're doing stops spam-sneaking just because they branched hide or listen.  They continue to spam-sneak for at least a couple more days, because the difference between -10% off your max and being at your max is usually the difference between getting detected by maxed listen or not.  If you move the branch point...everyone still knows that once you branch, you still have 25 friggin' points to go!  If you honestly believe that players will look at that knowledge (25 points left!) and say "nah, I'm good bro," you're delusional--except in the case of some of the shit crafting skills that you just have to get through to get to the good stuff, and like I said...merchants are not even remotely related to the problem we're talking about.

All of the "good" skills that branch things still need to be maxed, because they're only "good" if they -work-, and they only work reliably if they're maxed.  Fine, people will branch stuff faster, but they'll still engage in the last-ditch max grind, because the average player simply is not going to let that 25 points sit there in the dumpster.

This idea that people only "grind" to either a) branch or b) see the skill level go up is absolutely false.  People grind so their shit works better.  Once you have seen the "promised land" for weapon skills, you will never be satisfied with jman-level functionality, regardless of whether you branched a stupid advanced weapon skill or not.  Every time you hit an arm, leg, foot, or something miraculously dodges you, you're going to think "probably still got points to go."  It's not going to stop the grind...it'll just restart the grind to max that advanced weapon skill, assuming the player even cares to use it.

So...sure, move the branch point, I guess--it'll make advanced weapons easier to get and more common, and it'll make parry easier to branch for assassins and rangers, which is all cool, I guess.  But don't argue that it's going to change the grind game, because it isn't.

[Armaddict]

I'm okay with grinding to get where I want to be. Getting good for pvp? It's such a miniscule part of the game I don't know that I'm going to focus on it, but if I did, I'd accept a grind there too. After all, any opponent I've got is going to go through the same grind.

You and me are in the same boat.  But I don't consider that a grind.  I like to use my skills, find challenges, and overcome them.  That isn't the same as grinding.  What I'm talking about is striking a balance for the players, while simultaneously removing the 'need' to do it, for some other players who are not so skill-oriented as I am, nor as familiar with it.  Make it attainable so that the people who need that branch can stop doing shit they don't want to do, and those of us who like doing that shit will continue to do so because that's what we do.

I'm not real sure what some of you want. Seems like some want all game mechanics obscured and we just be given a basic ">" for a prompt. Other seem to want to be loaded with a character who has all the skills already branched and ready to play.

That's...nowhere near what's been mentioned, to the point that I think you're intentionally throwing out hyperbole.  Keep in mind that the same way you can't imagine the game being healthy without skill levels being seen is how some of us felt about them being seen; the 'hidden' level was not inferior, it was just jarring to people who came here from character-sheet based roleplaying games where everything was tracked and recorded, and all actions were based on design to improve them.

I feel like eliminating skill level visibility would disadvantage newer players with respect to older players, because older players have years of data now to correlate in-game practical ability to skill level, whether it's visible or not.

As noted, I don't think veterans actually push for the dominion of the game through concealment of code.  But that was an appearance that was unhealthy and hard to put into terms for a newer player who was just starting to figure things out.  However, the truth is that while the lack of appearance of the level is -jarring- to a new player, they're at the same disadvantage whether skill levels are showing or not; they don't know how to effectively train, they don't know what levels mean what.  You said it yourself.  The experience is what gives the advantage, not the visibility.   So it again falls back on the visibility merely prompting a reward for behavior, and a false need for that behavior, for at least a portion of the playerbase.  Meanwhile, the only 'boon' of it is a friendlier-looking skill list for the unfamiliar, and a reward whenever it ticks up...the latter of which, I think, is the very subtle cause of a lot of this discussion.

It being invisible again doesn't change the skill-oriented progression in the game.  It just makes use of the skill more relevant, and gauging where you in the spectrum more based on experiences of the character.  A bynner will only know how good he is by comparison to peers.  He may feel like a badass when he's surrounded by a bunch of burglars, then get surprised by a giant agile spider.  In our current iteration, that's pretty hard to imagine, but in a roleplaying atmosphere, that makes a lot of sense.

'How good are you?'
'I haven't met a challenge in a long time.'
This becomes a lot more exciting when you don't have silent confirmation that you are indeed probably better than 90% of the playerbase in a weapon skill, versus just being in a closed environment with no challenges.

But don't argue that it's going to change the grind game, because it isn't.

It does.  Not in that it doesn't happen, but the standard of comparison changes.  When you're succeeding against everything you hope to succeed with, there's not many that will still engage in mindless use of the skill in hopes of getting more points into it.  That's kind of a rare thing...unless you continue to see rewards for it.  An example is an elf with high agility using sneak.  You are hardly failing through journeyman.  You pretty much stop failing halfway through advanced.  If you need to branch from that, you have to find places that inhibit your sneak, for no real reason.  You behave out of the norm out of the need for a fail.  If you lower branching, you still see you're not to master yet.  Same behavior.

If it's hidden AND branching occurs lower...you stop the behavior when you have your branch and you know you never fail.  You assume you're already at master.  And for all intensive purposes, you are.  -But the behavior changes-.

The point of training a skill, for the most part, is to be -functional- with it.

Exactly.  Functionality rules.  Not the skill list.  The need to train falls when functionality is realized.  When you remove the need for the branching, and you are succeeding constantly, there need be no further motivation to 'train', because you should be moving on, quite clearly, to 'use' instead.

[Miradus]

I like my hyperbole. You can't take it away from me.

So maybe it's just a matter of branching stuff from stuff that makes sense.

When I learned what I had to do to branch sneak on a ranger I was ready to jump off a bridge. My wilderness-loving character has to leave the wilderness and sit in a tavern to learn a fundamental skill for surviving in the wilderness? C'mon.

But some things do make sense. Your skill in riding branching some skills to use on your mount makes good sense. And I'm going to branch those things just by playing the game.

Maybe that's the key. Find the skills that take you out of the style of play and move them around.

[Armaddict]

Maybe that's the key. Find the skills that take you out of the style of play and move them around.

I agree.  I think a lot of the evaluation of branching as a whole can be made into a much more fluid movement altogether, without the need for really revamping skill progression as a whole, which seems to be the other recourse.

[John]

Synthesis' post seems to be the epitome of worrying too much about skills. Not that he's a bad player. It's simply a good example of what this thread is about.

[Case]

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.

No, it wasn't a specific comment. I find it hilariously stupid that the same skills to kill animals are equivalent to fighting people. I think it should be two skillsets basically.

[BadSkeelz]

hey 300 showed young spartans (so they get best stats for gains) skilling up on wolves before engaging in PVP so it makes sense to me



More seriously, wasn't there a change awhile back to add hidden skill modifiers to Offense based on what kind of creature_types you were leveling up on? Maybe that needs expansion, so that someone who skills up exclusively on snakes is still rather hopeless fighting someone who has trained on other humanoids. I do wonder just how significant those factors really are.

[Miradus]

Swordfighting, no it doesn't make a lot of sense but meh.

Spears, arrows, even an axe? Sure. There's a lot of cultural examples from our own world to draw on. So many that I have trouble understanding why anyone wouldn't think it made sense. Look at the Comanche for one good example.

[Armaddict]

I'd have no problems with expansion and definition in it, but I don't necessarily see it as a huge problem as is, either.

And apologies for the assumption you were replying to me, Case, though apparently it led to further elaboration that was needed anyway. 

[nauta]

hey 300 showed young spartans (so they get best stats for gains) skilling up on wolves before engaging in PVP so it makes sense to me



More seriously, wasn't there a change awhile back to add hidden skill modifiers to Offense based on what kind of creature_types you were leveling up on? Maybe that needs expansion, so that someone who skills up exclusively on snakes is still rather hopeless fighting someone who has trained on other humanoids. I do wonder just how significant those factors really are.

There is code implemented announced in January and discussed around then too:

http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,31255.msg923994.html#msg923994

It's in RAT which I guess is locked, so I can't quote it, but here's a cut-and-paste:

-Ability to use specific weapon type vs specific race type is now correctly read/written to characters.  Previously the first and last combinations were unusable.  This may result in a slight decrease (or increase) in combat vs specific race types (using specific weapon types) as a result of using the correct values, until skills level out through more combat.

[snip]

Each character has a matrix of skills which you can think of like a chart.  Along one side are the weapon types (bare handed, slash, chop, pierce, stab, etc...), along the opposing axis are race types (humanoid, avian, ophidian, insect, and so on).  The intersection on this matrix is a skill that provides a bonus to offense when an attack is made.

Despite what others have speculated, this is not guild based, but is rather purely experience based.

If you fight most of your battles using a sword against snakes - you'll be pretty good at using slashing weapons against snakes.  Maybe not pretty good, but better than if you used a club or a spear, certainly.

----

With regards to displaying this information to players - the benefit it gives isn't huge.  It isn't like double offense, but it is enough it is noticeable.  This was one of many (many) long term projects started up that didn't see their full fruition.    There were periods of time where the benefit was removed while debating its future, then re-added, but still not completed.  For that reason it's never shown up in the skills command (for players).

It will need more work before it shows up for players.  Either in the skills command, or maybe in combat messages such as, "Using your knowledge of slashing weapons and snakes, you deal a deft blow."

When it was implemented, staff warned those of us fighting gith that we'd see a hit to our vs_humanoid hidden stat for a bit.

[BadSkeelz]

Thanks Nauta.

Swordfighting, no it doesn't make a lot of sense but meh.

Spears, arrows, even an axe? Sure. There's a lot of cultural examples from our own world to draw on. So many that I have trouble understanding why anyone wouldn't think it made sense. Look at the Comanche for one good example.

Eh, I still find the idea of "experience from fighting beasts is equivalent to fighting men" skills a little specious. As you said, it fits for some weapons better than others, but only so much.

The Comanche skill with a bow and the (mounted) lance in combat could certainly be rationalized as coming from their time hunting. But the Comanche weren't dueling buffalo with an axe. I don't think anyone hunted with an axe like we would in Armageddon. For a spear, I'm not sure hunting a wolf or bear on foot with one would teach much of how to fight another human (except maybe to steel your nerves and hone your reflexes). It wouldn't teach you anything about how to deal with an opponent who is using, say, a shield.

I think the Comanche example illustrates weaknesses and shortcomings in Armageddon's combat code much more than it rationalizes them. Mounted combat especially is poorly explored and underutilized.

[Twilight]

I don't think it would be a horrible thing if there were lots of merchants running around with maxed skills.

I do think it would be a horrible thing if there were lots of combat oriented characters running around with maxed skills.  To a certain extent the game needs folks to plateau at a certain level, with only really dedicated, long lived characters reaching the max potential for combat.  The 1% of long lived combat characters, not the 25%.

[Feco]

On Zalanthas, we hunt humongous man-eating desert monsters.  I'm willing to suspend my disbelief.

[BadSkeelz]

In response to the first post, I gather there is more skill discussion now than when I started four years ago, or beyond that.

I imagine the playerbase has grown a little more code-obsessed (or at least more willing to discuss it openly) as it ages due to an increased desire to protect our investments in our characters. This is particularly true for combat and stealth characters, which dominate code discussion. For these "Action" PCs, skill levels and code gain have higher influence on the success and longevity of that character than a merchant, or noble, or other non-action-oriented character. With a merchant, your only threat during skill-up is running out of money and starving. With a warrior or a pickpocket or an assassin, you are risking your character every time you engage in skillplay. Even in sparring, you're just one bad round or server-disconnect or forgot-to-unequip-my-actual-weapon away from death.

That it takes so comparatively long to skill-up an Action PC to "useful" levels just increases the focus on the code. A Merchant can be made useful in a matter of RL days. A warrior can take RL weeks to reach a point where two gith are not going to obliterate him. Once Action PCs get to a point where you can begin engaging more adventurously with their skills, the time invested is pretty significant. I think this encourages a cycle where players of these PCs feel they must continually get better to protect their investment (and to make up for inevitable stat decay), whether from more dangerous monsters they choose to face or hypothetical PVP opponents.

For my part, I just pick warriors, hope I roll a good stat, join a combat clan, and train to the point where I think I can reasonably survive an encounter with LocalDangerousMonster. That usually happens within about 10 days. Hopefully by that point I've acquired roleplay that makes the character interesting to play, because the actual combat of Armageddon is frankly not good enough to be compelling on its own.

I don't mind non-magickal code being discussed. As I see it, Code are the rules of the game, and forbidding people from discussing Code is like forbidding DnD players from looking up how their skill goes in the rulebook. Given the fact that the older players at the table will have a better sense of the code (whether through trial and error, prior experience as a DM, or giving the current DM sexual favors in exchange for knowledge), enforcing a Code discussion blackout is just a means of favoring the older players over the new. Code discussion evens the playing field and I think encourages us to be less obsessed with it. If we all know how to play a useful Action character, and we're confident that it will come with playing that character organically from a RP standpoint ("I hunt because I need food" vs "I hunt because I need to git gud and branch"), there's less time devoted to sparring and code-tricks and more time Roleplaying.

I think there's been a lot of progress in the last year or so to putting everyone on an even footing when it comes to Code knowledge.

[BadSkeelz]

One more thing I forgot to mention is that Skill discussion is pretty much the only sanctioned discussion on the GDB. We can discuss plot ideas in vague terms, but can't go in to specifics less we reveal anything or come across as critical of current plotrunners.

[Synthesis]

Armaddict, your reasoning relies on the assumption that players will be too stupid to tell the difference between being on the plateau and being maxed, or too lazy to continue to grind, and that they will play as if they are maxed (i.e. training is no longer useful).

I'm assuming that players will be able to tell the difference (except at the extreme near-max of the plateau), and even where skill gains are slow and/or minimal, they will continue to play as if they are not maxed, because there is -real- value in being maxed, vs. being resigned to jman.

The rest of the stuff...meh...okay, y'all can argue about all the fancy creature vs. humanoid vs. hunting vs. sparring shit or whatever, but it just clouds the discussion with wishful thinking about an ideal skill system that will be years in the making, if it ever comes about at all.

Twilight:  nobody is making the argument that being maxed in combat should take less time.  The argument is that it is -impossible- without twinking.  If you rig the game so that only twinks can get maxed...I mean...I guess that's one way to design a game. Not the best way, if you ask me, but that's how it's currently set up.

[Dunetrade55]

Armaddict, your reasoning relies on the assumption that players will be too stupid to tell the difference between being on the plateau and being maxed, or too lazy to continue to grind, and that they will play as if they are maxed (i.e. training is no longer useful).

I'm assuming that players will be able to tell the difference (except at the extreme near-max of the plateau), and even where skill gains are slow and/or minimal, they will continue to play as if they are not maxed, because there is -real- value in being maxed, vs. being resigned to jman.

The rest of the stuff...meh...okay, y'all can argue about all the fancy creature vs. humanoid vs. hunting vs. sparring shit or whatever, but it just clouds the discussion with wishful thinking about an ideal skill system that will be years in the making, if it ever comes about at all.

Twilight:  nobody is making the argument that being maxed in combat should take less time.  The argument is that it is -impossible- without twinking.  If you rig the game so that only twinks can get maxed...I mean...I guess that's one way to design a game. Not the best way, if you ask me, but that's how it's currently set up.

I think you may possibly be projecting. I find the grind to get critical skill X to pop on my skill list to be draining and involve just way too much sillyness. It's like, I don't want to master this skill fully right now, I just want to get to the goodies, and I'll come back to clean up later/at my leisure and finish it up as it relates to my other goals. Branching earlier would end the obsessive twinkery of players who actually give a shit about something more than being top-tier, which I assume are numerous people who've posted in this thread.

I agree with you on merchants, for everything except getting a few skills, namely, club-making, axe-making, and fricking armor making. I mean, seriously, how hard is it to whittle out a crude representation of a massive chicken-leg from a log? I think lengths of bone should already BE clubs that can be refined. The club and axe are the two most primitive forms of weapon known to man. Sure, you could make an axe shaft out of wood, but you could also do it with fricking bone. I don't understand these few branch trees, and think club-making should be available from the get-go, and branch axe-making.

The weapon-making subguilds don't even touch on axe or club-making. I suspect these factors, also given the heavy concentration of the playerbase in the south, contribute to the apparent lack of club and axe recipes, which makes them rather underwhelming skills to unlock anyway.