Idea: New skill grade "Grand Master", and some more stuff.

[Fathi]

Yeah I couldnt think of anything for merchant, I just couldnt

Haggle. 

[nauta]

Make us all suck more.

I appreciate how well you've articulated your reasoning, motivation, and solution here. However, and no offense intended, I disagree with you pretty much completely. Still trying to articulate my thoughts on it properly, though.

None taken!

We'd also be a lot more 'even' in terms of skills progression.

By that, do you mean that the difference between and 'old' PC and a 'young' one would be less, or are you talking about the different guilds being more 'even'? Or both?

The 'old' versus 'young'.  Some people have been spitballing ideas about how to eliminate or weaken the grind on a new PC.  One idea tossed out was to have us all pop into the game out of chargen as fully skilled PCs.  My idea (or I guess boog's! Credz) flips that on its head: you'd need to train a lot less to catch up with other people because we'd all suck equally.  (Now not quite equally: I still want some character development and skills development to allow for variety and, in my view, moving from squishy to hard in an outdoorsy character literally builds character.)

I enjoy that progression when you move from running from gortoks to being able to reasonable handle yourself against one, but having to run from the pack.  I don't really like it when I reach that level where I can go get a coffee when battle starts because I know nothing bad will come to me.

(Also, if you want to suck more, I'm pretty sure you could spec-app -lower- skill caps)

Perhaps it should be: let us all suck equally.  I probably would for the PvE aspect of things -- I really do think that once you reach a certain threshold the animals because a little too easy -- except I wouldn't because of the PvP aspect, or at least I wouldn't be motivated to use a specapp on the idea -- I've played plenty of city-based non-combat types who had combat guilds and never bothered sparring.

[Hauwke]

I think a big fat no to the scaling people down thing. In all honesty all it would achieve is making warriors even worse at their job.

[Pretentious]

let us all suck equally.

Okay, I'm going to try and tackle this without delving too much into the code on skills, combat, and guild, which is probably going to rather challenging given the topic. Forgive me for being vague on points.

(1) PvE.  As mentioned elsewhere, once you achieve advanced or even high journeyman in your combat skills, there's very little that can hurt you out in the wilds, provided you are paying attention.  (Always bad luck cases.)

I'm not quite sure where you're drawing the line on this, but it's not true in my experience. Your objection seems to be that PCs can progress to the point where things that once were deadly challenging end up being much more trivial to face, and if they ever become something your PC is totally comfortable facing, that's a tragic loss to the fun of the game. I feel like that's ignoring the fact that once your PC isn't much challenged by the vicious, horned rabbit that used to give them trouble that there aren't  more challenges out there. As your PC grows and becomes more skilled, that opens up more and more of the Known to them.  You don't just get to the point where nothing poses a real challenge to your PC anymore. There are balrogs out there, damnit, and I want to run away from them scared and half-dead! I'm perfectly happy getting to the point where I can slaughter bunnies, because there is SO MUCH more out there.

If you don't find PvE exciting once gortoks don't pose any real danger to your PC, I can't help but like you're missing out.

I don't really like it when I reach that level where I can go get a coffee when battle starts because I know nothing bad will come to me.

Try that in the Grey Forest. I dare you.

The Known isn't uniform. There's a huge range of danger, in creatures and in situation. And I don't like the idea of being locked into a narrow range of it so that fighting those vicious horned bunnies always has an element of excitement and danger.

(2) PvP works out to the same race to the top no matter where that top is: be it master, grand master, or apprentice.  However, there would be a kind of leveling-out effect here by eliminating advanced and master, that I think would be nice.

It's really hard to talk about this without going into specific skills and guilds, but I'll give it my best shot. First off, this would disproportionately affect combat focused guilds, rather than simply smoothing off the grind. You mentioned that the you were referring to the 'young' vs 'old' rather than also wanting to target guild differences, so I think it's worth noting that the changes you've proposed have significant consequences beyond that - far more heavily for some guilds than others.

Another concern I have is that by trying to make skills less significant, stats are going to matter more. Potentially a lot more. I don't think that's good for the game, and if the solution to that is to narrow the range of stats too the game will just start to feel more and more like a hack'n'slash or some MMO where all characters must be 'balanced' or inherently equal, and that's not what makes Armageddon enjoyable for me.

Some people have been spitballing ideas about how to eliminate or weaken the grind on a new PC....  My idea (or I guess boog's! Credz) flips that on its head: you'd need to train a lot less to catch up with other people because we'd all suck equally.

I don't feel that you and 'some people' are necessarily trying to solve the same problem here. Sure, if we're just talking about being competitive in PvP, making everyone suck equally, you're shortening the time it takes to get there... but for a lot of people, the desire to have skilled PCs isn't about being able to engage in PvP with that grizzled middle-aged legend of a warrior with less of a grind. They want to be involved in hunting dangerous, rare, animals (just one example), and offering them up the mediocrity of always being in danger while fighting gortoks in exchange is the opposite of what they want.

I'm gonna take a moment here to mention that I find it awkward talking about Arm in terms of PvP and PvE. But this post is getting a bit long to go another tangent on why.

Moving on.

failing a skill, especially in combat situations, generates a lot more fun than never failing a skill... having to chase down or hire someone to get more ingredients for the craft you failed, to failing to skin the hide and having to go hunt another one...

I don't fully disagree with you here, but I don't think it's categorically true. If we never failed, the game would be boring. If we failed all over the place, the game would be boring and frustrating. Challenge is fun. Progression is fun. Your effort meaning something is fun. There should be things that are really challenging, things that really aren't, and a whole range in between, and you should be able to strive to improve. And we do have all those things. Could they be improved, nuance added? Sure. But I really don't see 'more failure means more fun!' as a good rule of thumb. It could help in some places, but I think it's just going to end up making things a lot more frustrating across the board if you use it as a guiding principle.

I had more I intended to talk about... but this has gotten rather lengthy.

[Reiloth]

Yeah, i'm confused how lowering the 'skill ceiling' will be anything but frustrating.

Again, i'd rather choose a few skills that are specific to my guild or things my 'guild' is supposed to be good at (hide/sneak for Assassin, or backstab), and train everything else from the ground up.

There are some guilds that have a massive range from 'starting skill' to 'master skill', and branching only at the very end. To me this is the kind of spread that encourages some level of skill-grinding, because the journey from A to B is so hellaciously long, if you were to train the skills realistically, you would never branch, you would never even see the skills that are actually the meat and potatoes of those guilds.

A good example is "Listen" for Ranger, to use a mundane example. Needing to skill-grind listen to gain a skill that is much more the meat and potatoes of that guild leads Rangers to sitting at bars to overhear conversations as the main path towards branching. Sure, Rangers should be 'out in the wilds, listening for creatures to rustle about', but given how hard it is to find those creatures for a new rangers (see: newbie scan), and the futility of it, most Rangers will go into a tavern to sit at another table and overhear the bar. That to me means something is wrong with the order of the skills, and with the emphasis on where the branching of that skill is.

If branching a skill were based on wisdom, or more heavily on wisdom, rather than reaching a certain numerical threshold of a skill, I think we would automatically see more realistic play.

This means, if you have a high wisdom character, they might branch a skill even when they are at say, apprentice or journeyman. So the 'pop' of a branch isn't something you can predict (which you very much can now). It's something that happens naturally, and if your PC is hip to how the universe fits together (high wisdom), they figure it out quicker than the dump-stat Bynner who can just barely figure out which side is the pointy end.

To me this means...Merchants will figure out the crafts they want to get to, without needing to grind 'Useless Farts' for a sacred branch. Assassins might be able to use non-lethal methods before they learn how to use the lethal methods with extreme efficiency. A high-wisdom warrior might branch an advanced weapon at apprentice or jman, diversifying the weapons that are used in the world and the 'talents' between Warriors.

tl;dr

Associate when skills branch with the wisdom stat. Lower the range of when a skill can branch.

[bardlyone]

That's a badass idea, too, Reiloth. Though I'm admittedly biased and nearly always prioritize wisdom first.

[Delirium]

swap sneak/hide to start with and have them branch listen/scan.

problem solved

[Reiloth]

swap sneak/hide to start with and have them branch listen/scan.

problem solved

That's just with Ranger, and I don't think it solves the problem. Each Guild has its own set of 'Actually Useful Skill preceded by skill that's marginally useful'. I don't think this is very congruous, unless you can pick and choose skills, which we can't.

I think we should either be raising the minimums (which I don't think is necessarily fair or the answer), or having branching be totally random and based on wisdom (which I think is more fair, and actually more realistic). So it's random, but you have a better chance of branching based off your wisdom and the minimum of the skill. It gets easier to branch the better you get at a skill, but it isn't some narrow range 80-90 when you branch. It's anytime, baby!

[In Dreams]

Yeah, i'm confused how lowering the 'skill ceiling' will be anything but frustrating.

Again, i'd rather choose a few skills that are specific to my guild or things my 'guild' is supposed to be good at (hide/sneak for Assassin, or backstab), and train everything else from the ground up.

There are some guilds that have a massive range from 'starting skill' to 'master skill', and branching only at the very end. To me this is the kind of spread that encourages some level of skill-grinding, because the journey from A to B is so hellaciously long, if you were to train the skills realistically, you would never branch, you would never even see the skills that are actually the meat and potatoes of those guilds.

A good example is "Listen" for Ranger, to use a mundane example. Needing to skill-grind listen to gain a skill that is much more the meat and potatoes of that guild leads Rangers to sitting at bars to overhear conversations as the main path towards branching. Sure, Rangers should be 'out in the wilds, listening for creatures to rustle about', but given how hard it is to find those creatures for a new rangers (see: newbie scan), and the futility of it, most Rangers will go into a tavern to sit at another table and overhear the bar. That to me means something is wrong with the order of the skills, and with the emphasis on where the branching of that skill is.

If branching a skill were based on wisdom, or more heavily on wisdom, rather than reaching a certain numerical threshold of a skill, I think we would automatically see more realistic play.

This means, if you have a high wisdom character, they might branch a skill even when they are at say, apprentice or journeyman. So the 'pop' of a branch isn't something you can predict (which you very much can now). It's something that happens naturally, and if your PC is hip to how the universe fits together (high wisdom), they figure it out quicker than the dump-stat Bynner who can just barely figure out which side is the pointy end.

To me this means...Merchants will figure out the crafts they want to get to, without needing to grind 'Useless Farts' for a sacred branch. Assassins might be able to use non-lethal methods before they learn how to use the lethal methods with extreme efficiency. A high-wisdom warrior might branch an advanced weapon at apprentice or jman, diversifying the weapons that are used in the world and the 'talents' between Warriors.

tl;dr

Associate when skills branch with the wisdom stat. Lower the range of when a skill can branch.

I love this idea!