Mundane Subclass Feedback

[Synthesis]

Ah, yeah.  Apprentice-capped chopping weapons on brute is totally pointless when even the lowest-tier classes eventually get jman in at least one weapon skill.

Same thing for slashing on gladiator.

[Heade]

Ah, yeah.  Apprentice-capped chopping weapons on brute is totally pointless when even the lowest-tier classes eventually get jman in at least one weapon skill.

Same thing for slashing on gladiator.

What are your thoughts on the rest of my post? I think those changes would significantly improve the available subguilds and make them all fairly desireable.

[only_plays_tribals]

Nomad -  Add Tame mounts, wilderness quit

As someone who only really plays tribals and outdoorsy characters (yes it's all true)

Giving nomad the quit out skills at least would make a lot of sense for anyone picking a craft guild or a heavy combat that wants to play a tradesman or a guard/escort and also, be tribal. Even if just hanging out in tents a nomad is deffo going to know how to make a camp, that's how they live. I've always though this should be the case.

edit: disagree with gating nomad behind karma though. Nomad is one of those subclasses even newbies can play effectively and have a lot of fun with, exploring the concept of a tribe. It's also a good RP method for a new player to excuse themselves for not knowing things right out the gate (oh I never heard of  that way out in the sand etc)

It's how I started out and what got me hooked. If gating rare/difficult to play things behind karma is the historical norm, tribals shouldn't be gated IMHO. I say tribal because the help docs specifically say "If you are playing a character with a nomadic
background, you should pick this subclass."

[only_plays_tribals]

Also agree with just making one medic subclass and not gating it behind karma.

I'm sorry but making any bandage better than a torn piece of cloth is f'ing hard even at advanced. Even tearing cloth is hard, with tools! You can go through a bag of expensive materials and maybe get a couple successes. It's just not worth it. If someone is hellbent on playing a full blown medic concept to the degree they devote a whole subclass to it, they're going to need master level bandage making or will just look like a jackass half the time.

[Heade]

I was putting nomad behind a gate due to the wilderness quit and tame abilities being very powerful.

Maybe the solution would be to create a "Tribal" 0-cost subguild that is identical to the current nomad, and have an ESG Nomad with tame,wilderness quit, forage wild, and hitch 2 mounts. Not all tribals would necessarily have a nomads skillset. Some tribals would mostly only travel with the rest of their tribe when the tribe uprooted tent city, so this distinction would make sense in Zalanthas, I think.

Pretty sure staff would want wilderness quit gated because the vast majority of the population is supposed to be based in the cities. By making exceptions codedly rare, they sort of force them to be rare in reality as well.

[Brokkr]

Between what I've said in my post, knowing which skills went up (green) and which ones have gone down (red), you have an insane amount of data for anyone halfway decent at analytics.

For example, you know that Slipknife went from Master to Advanced.  But you also know that Rogue and Cutpurse went up within the Advanced range.  And you can make an educated guess that all three of them have the same level of stealth skills based on what I posted. 

I am unsure of where folks are getting the idea that things are leveling out, between 0 and 1/2 karma.  0 karma stealth skills, for example, are clearly worse.  Sure, there are some secondary skills or skills with some specific code quirks, like ride, that are the same.  But that is the exception, rather than the rule.  So I am confused as to what is being looked at when comments are made that they are essentially the same.

Ok, let me clarify my position: Not everyone who looks over the helpfiles or website outlining what these classes get is going to read this thread. So from the standpoint of someone who has not seen this thread, Advanced = Advanced, and that makes many of those classes not look appealing. And I -still- don't know exactly -where- on the spectrum of advanced many of these classes fall. I can speculate, but since we don't see the numbers, speculation is all it is.

Like I said, from the perspective of a player who hasn't seen this thread, Slipknife seems kind of pointless when looking at what it gives you for 2 karma. I'll go through each of the others individually in a subsequent post.

Yeah, my biggest hangup with the whole thing (classes and subclasses) is stealth capping at advanced.  I played a city-elf warrior/rogue once (steal, sneak, and hide capped at advanced), and I vaguely remember the skills not being reliable enough to risk using on PCs.

From what I understand, on a scale of 100, advanced ranges from 60-79.

Slipknife seems fine, to me.  Advanced backstab is good enough that you'll hit -almost- every time on a normal backstab attempt, and the stealth aspect has been dropped to be on par with other stealth subclasses.  But again...it's theorycrafting on my part, because the class matrix is so new.

Any concerns around stealth for subclasses would literally just be slipknife.  Rogue, cut purse and outdoorsman would all have their stealth skills go up.  All of them land at the same point, halfway between rogue and slipknife.

[only_plays_tribals]

I'd agree with having a split for the subclass nomad with one gated and one not. So long as at least one of them was a 0 karma option.

It does stand to reason some tribal people would have different skill subsets and like it as not, nomad was always a required subclass pick if you wanted to play someone originating from the dunes. So more options for that role, in light of the class changes, would be nice to see.

Edit: Honestly as I think about it just give Recluse Master Bendune + Tribal accent. Bam. Solved.

[Heade]

Any concerns around stealth for subclasses would literally just be slipknife.  Rogue, cut purse and outdoorsman would all have their stealth skills go up.  All of them land at the same point, halfway between rogue and slipknife.

Did you happen to read my more recent post? It got caught at the bottom of a page change, but is here:

OK, had some time to mull these over. I do see where your design decision is going with this, Brokkr. I understand that stealth skills currently not particularly valued at "Advanced" right now should theoretically be more valuable in the future under this design because far fewer classes will have master scan. I've taken that into consideration below.

Having thought about it and Arm's history, I guess my biggest issue is that I don't really know why some of these are so heavily Karma-Gated. Throughout Arm's history, Karma was typically used to keep rare things rare (magic, Muls, etc), to prevent rampant griefing by immature players, and to ensure that players entrusted with difficult racial or societal concepts understood the world enough to portray them effectively. The vast majority of these extended subguilds don't fall under any of those potential categories, so I don't know why they cost 2 karma at all. With the recent karma compression, I think we could safely fit all subguilds and extended subguilds into 0-1 karma options. Below is what I'd like to see:

0-Karma
Apothecary - Moved to 0-Karma. No reason to gate this. Very little to abuse, so there is no reason to Karma-Gate it.
Brute - Drop Armor repair to apprentice and raise Chopping Weapons to Journeyman (There are already plenty of subs that get armor repair and this fits more with the idea of a brute)
*Edit:Gladiator - Raise slashing to journeyman. (As per Synthesis' suggestion)
Nomad - Moved to 1 Karma
Physician - Gone. Replaced by Apothecary.
*Edit:Tribal - New 0-Karma Subclass identical to current Nomad. (As per Always_plays_Tribals input)

1-Karma
Cavalry - Lose the ability to tame, raise Ride and Charge to Master. Let Cavalry be the combat-focused riding subclass.
Grebber - Raise forage to master.
Nomad -  Add Tame mounts, wilderness quit, hitch 2 mounts, and forage wild. Let the nomads be the wilderness-based traders, living off the land. Let Cavalry be the combat riders.
Recluse - Gone. Merged with Nomad.
Reaver - Drop Armor Repair, Add Parry. (As Synthesis pointed out, the primary reason for these combat subs is to add combat utility and surviveability to the lowest tier main classes. Parry makes that something useful. Most of the classes who'd want to take this have armor repair already.)
Lancer & Bruiser - Drop Disarm, Add Parry (As above. They need a defensive boost to be at all useful.)
Berserker - I'd leave this the same, not because I think it's useful, but rather as an option for someone who wanted to play a completely offense-based "Berserker". Maybe add Hack.
Spy - New Extended Subguild that gets Sneak, Hide and Listen at Master, Advanced Scan.
Poisoner - New ESG that has poison and brew at Master. That's it, that's all they get.

All other 2-Karma Options moved to 1-Karma options - With the Karma compression that happened along with the regenerating Karma thing, 2 Karma is a lot for any of these options and doesn't align with Arm's historical reason for having Karma to begin with.

I'd also like to add my voice to those who lament the necessity of a subguild to custom craft items. I'd much rather see it be left as a 0-karma option, but added to be included in the heavy crafting classes automatically.

I'm actually excited about a lot of the changes to Arm, but I think the above changes would be best for the game and allow people the flexibility to flesh out their characters better.

[Brokkr]

I'm open to suggestion on changing any of the subclass names, and/or adding a skill if it is reasonable and has some good logic behind it.

It would seem reasonable to perhaps change the Recluse subclass name (suggestions welcomed) and add Bendune, to get to where you are heading.

There should still be tension in terms of trade offs, with the subclasses, rather than giving them everything to fill in all the gaps, so I don't see broadening skill set for a quit capable subclass further than that.

As for why there are 2k subclasses, it is the same reasoning behind hating other powerful options.  Combat skills can be combined in ways that can significantly alter the power dynamic of a character.  Even something "weak" like aggressor (we certainly saw enough ranger,assassin/aggressor,bruiser,lancer,berserker characters in the past.

[Brokkr]

Yes but won't have time to reply until later.

[only_plays_tribals]

Perhaps "Migrant" which is similar. A lot of tribal roles seem to end up in the VNPC or 'dead tribe' category which would make sense for a wandering migrant, with fewer overall "tribal" skills aside from getting around from place to place and sleeping whenever needed.

[Heade]

I'm open to suggestion on changing any of the subclass names, and/or adding a skill if it is reasonable and has some good logic behind it.

How about renaming recluse into Nomad Trapper and giving them Master Bendune/Tribal Accent, Advanced Hunt, Jman haggle, Jman Forage, Hitch 2 mounts, Tame Mount, and Jman ride? It basically makes them a subclass specifically about finding, taming, and selling mounts. Despite there being several mid-tier skills there, they're all rather specific in application. I wouldn't even care if wilderness quit was taken off of it completely and the rest was left intact.

Wilderness quit, while it would certainly be applicable to such a character archetype, isn't critical to the role. But it's not really critical to most any role. It's just very, very convenient for a lot of roles, and makes sense for many of them from an in-game perspective. It would be nice if it wasn't regarded as if it should be so rare. I'd like to see wilderness_quit added to basically every wilderness-based class or subclass, personally. It represents the ability to know how to set up camp for the night. Why wouldn't a Stalker, Scout, Raider, Nomad, or Dune-Trader equally be able to learn such a thing? It seems intrinsic to their livelihoods to be able to do just that. The fact that there was a subguild specifically introduced that has virtually NOTHING except wilderness quit is absurd. It shouldn't be that rare when entire societies essentially live in the wilderness. Not having wilderness quit on a wilderness character is really more of an OOC penalty/inconvenience than it has to do with promoting realistic play, in my opinion.

But back on the topic of my suggested changes. Basically, I'm looking for a different place to put "Tame Mount" other than cavalry. Cavalry seems like it should be a combat-themed subclass with Master Ride and Master Charge without having Tame Mount. My suggested changes make the Recluse/Trapper more of an economic-focused subguild, and specializes Cavalry as a combat-focused subguild. If anything, this change makes them both more specialized rather than broad.

As for why there are 2k subclasses, it is the same reasoning behind hating other powerful options.  Combat skills can be combined in ways that can significantly alter the power dynamic of a character.  Even something "weak" like aggressor (we certainly saw enough ranger,assassin/aggressor,bruiser,lancer,berserker characters in the past.

Again, the 2K subclasses don't need to be 2K because of the compression of Karma that has occurred, and the fact that people with Karma can no longer spam-create Karma-required characters with the new Karma system. 2 Karma now is roughly the equivalent to 4-5 karma before the compression, right? So does staff think that these subguilds are -really- 4-5 karma subguilds? Of course not. Extended subguilds were free in the beginning with a special app, and as far as I know only ever increased to 1 karma until much more recently.

Insofar as those "weak" classes being used by combat classes like assassin to get kick, disarm, etc...that doesn't really matter any more, does it? We don't have rangers or assassins any more, and the changes I'm suggesting will have absolutely ZERO positive effect on people using the subguilds for those skills, because those people already have some sort of access to decent defensive abilities like parry or shield use. Dropping disarm from those classes and adding parry will actually make the core classes that have disarm more special, make the mixed combat classes like the old assassins who took these subguilds slightly less good, and add FAR more utility for these subguilds to be used by main guilds across the board to add a modicum of combat prowess. It wouldn't make any of the combat guilds OP, and the non-combat guilds still won't be coming out as amazing warriors. It just makes it to where someone could legitimately play a very Zalanthian archetype, like Proximo from Gladiator.


Someone who was able to learn to fight decently, but primarily made their living as a mercantile sort. Because this would be a Karma-Gated subguild, not EVERY merchant would have such a skillset, but it would make such a skillset possible. At the end of the day, even a long-lived merchant-type with such a subclass would still eventually be outclassed by all the Combat or Mixed core classes, but they wouldn't necessarily get completely stomped by a newly rolled fighter if they had lots of playtime practicing combat.

[Molten Heart]

.

[yousuff]

For a name for the recluse subclass, might I suggest:
Itinerant
Gypsy
Excursionist
Traveller
Wayfarer
Vagrant
Tramp
Rover
Knacker (Although irl this is derogatory, at least in Ireland where I'm from)
Tinker (See above)
~

[Medena]

Two more suggestions to replace recluse:

Drifter
Wanderer

[Synthesis]

Ultimately a point-buy system for subclasses is going to be the way to go.

Quit trying to guess what people want or find useful.  There's too much complexity to make sure every choice is reasonable/not OP/not useless in a 15x40 class/subclass matrix with 92 possible skills/perks.

Also, quit trying to guess what people are going to pick most often.  Implement a choice logger, and weight the cost of the skill/perk based on how often people pick it.  Every reboot, have the server run the numbers, and make certain skills cost more or less based on their popularity over time.  You've got what...88 skills, and 4 perks.  That bumps up to 264 skills and 4 perks for analysis, because skills can cap at jman, advanced, or master.  I'm pretty sure one of the mathematically-inclined folks here can figure out a point system for 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 CGP, and come up with a reasonable formula for weighting skill/perk cost by popularity.

If everyone really, really wants master city sneak and hide on their subclass, it's quite possible that eventually the only way you're going to get it is to blow 4 CGP and a special app to get just those 2 skills.  Tough shit.  If everyone wants it, that means it must be really fucking useful, so you gotta pay up.

[Armaddict]

I've suggested a point buy system where starting skill levels are more costly than ending skill levels, i.e. You can skip the grind at the cost of having a lower cap.

Honestly, for the amount of time that class and subclass revamp has taken, a point buy system would have been the way to go.  I'm still kinda squinting at most of the skill levels trying to figure out exactly what we're going for.  It just looks more and more like fable to me, where everyone gets everything but you just kinda don't use certain stuff as much.

[roughneck]

Grebber has city-hunt?  I think wilderness-hunt makes more sense.

And Cavalry without direction sense seems odd.

[Armaddict]

Grebber has city-hunt?  I think wilderness-hunt makes more sense.

And Cavalry without direction sense seems odd.

Not even sure why it has hunt at all.

Cavalry not having direction sense is alright; just because you can ride in formation doesn't mean you're a survivorman, it's just a mounted soldier.  That being said, this was kinda where I was going with the whole wilderness heavy/light combat serving as the cavalry, with the mixed/light mercantile being far more focused on the archery.  The prospect of turning mounted combat training/intuition into a subclass makes for some weird schizophrenia in class design.  You say 'freedom in character creation', I say 'why dafuq do we got all these miscreants in the byn doing cavalry formations?'

It's just...weird.  With 15 mundane classes, the emphasis on subclasses should be going doooown, not really...up.

[Brokkr]

This is your chance to provide feedback on the subclasses presented.  If there are gaps that could be filled by additional subclasses.  The time for providing such feedback is limited.

At this point the direction as already been chosen, by the people that choose the direction for the game.  Arm won't be going to a point buy system.  Arm will still have karma subclasses.

[Heade]

This is your chance to provide feedback on the subclasses presented.  If there are gaps that could be filled by additional subclasses.  The time for providing such feedback is limited.

At this point the direction as already been chosen, by the people that choose the direction for the game.  Arm won't be going to a point buy system.  Arm will still have karma subclasses.

Would it be possible to add custom crafting to the 2 heavy crafting guilds for free, perhaps with the caveat that it doesn't kick in until Master level for them? The 0-karma option will still be useful for other classes with crafting abilities, but it wouldn't shoehorn crafters who want to be able to do custom work into essentially playing without a subclass.

[sleepyhead]

Please. I would do anything for the option to CC without choosing that sub.

[MatisseOrOtherwise]

My three biggest points of feedback as of now:

1) CCing shouldn't be only tied to the CC subguild. At the very least, Master Trader should give the ability to CC (and have master value). At best, all Heavy Mercantiles should either get it innately or at their skills' peak.

2) Grebber shouldn't have city forage or city hunt. Remove hunt (or keep it either wilderness or unset), give wilderness master forage. Or rename the subguild, because the ability to climb and forage for food in the wilderness (Grebber is listed as having wild food forage capabilities in helpfiles, and in my own testing it does have this) does NOT correlate to this weird new direction of city forage with reduced forage, and doesn't suit the name of Grebber. It's more like some sort of weird elven rooftop dweller now. It's lost what made it Grebber. Plus there are so few other ways to get master forage.

3) Physician should either be weakened or removed, and Apothecary needs to keep its prior capabilities (who else even /gets/ master floristry?).

All of my prior points on my bit by bit stance still stand, but these three are - after a while away and a time to calm down - the ones nagging at me the most

[Brokkr]

My three biggest points of feedback as of now:

1) CCing shouldn't be only tied to the CC subguild. At the very least, Master Trader should give the ability to CC (and have master value). At best, all Heavy Mercantiles should either get it innately or at their skills' peak.

2) Grebber shouldn't have city forage or city hunt. Remove hunt (or keep it either wilderness or unset), give wilderness master forage. Or rename the subguild, because the ability to climb and forage for food in the wilderness (Grebber is listed as having wild food forage capabilities in helpfiles, and in my own testing it does have this) does NOT correlate to this weird new direction of city forage with reduced forage, and doesn't suit the name of Grebber. It's more like some sort of weird elven rooftop dweller now. It's lost what made it Grebber. Plus there are so few other ways to get master forage.

3) Physician should either be weakened or removed, and Apothecary needs to keep its prior capabilities (who else even /gets/ master floristry?).

All of my prior points on my bit by bit stance still stand, but these three are - after a while away and a time to calm down - the ones nagging at me the most

1)   Master Traders are traders, not craftsmen.  Look at the skills they get.  We aren't changing who gets custom crafting at this point.  Maybe we will in the future.
2)  Grebbers have both, because you can be a grebber in either environment.  No subclass is going to give master forage.  The 2nd best class gets it at advanced.  The change doesn't make a lot of difference anyways.
3)  Not moving Apothecary down in karma, so physician needs to be there to fill out the need for 0 karma folks.

[MatisseOrOtherwise]

My three biggest points of feedback as of now:

1) CCing shouldn't be only tied to the CC subguild. At the very least, Master Trader should give the ability to CC (and have master value). At best, all Heavy Mercantiles should either get it innately or at their skills' peak.

2) Grebber shouldn't have city forage or city hunt. Remove hunt (or keep it either wilderness or unset), give wilderness master forage. Or rename the subguild, because the ability to climb and forage for food in the wilderness (Grebber is listed as having wild food forage capabilities in helpfiles, and in my own testing it does have this) does NOT correlate to this weird new direction of city forage with reduced forage, and doesn't suit the name of Grebber. It's more like some sort of weird elven rooftop dweller now. It's lost what made it Grebber. Plus there are so few other ways to get master forage.

3) Physician should either be weakened or removed, and Apothecary needs to keep its prior capabilities (who else even /gets/ master floristry?).

All of my prior points on my bit by bit stance still stand, but these three are - after a while away and a time to calm down - the ones nagging at me the most

1)   Master Traders are traders, not craftsmen.  Look at the skills they get.  We aren't changing who gets custom crafting at this point.  Maybe we will in the future.
2)  Grebbers have both, because you can be a grebber in either environment.  No subclass is going to give master forage.  The 2nd best class gets it at advanced.  The change doesn't make a lot of difference anyways.
3)  Not moving Apothecary down in karma, so physician needs to be there to fill out the need for 0 karma folks.

Grebbers get both? That wasn't on the sheet. That changes things, though... Thank you for that clarification.

Physician is still quite strong for a 0 karma - the upgrade from Physician to Apothecary is minimal at best. I understand Physician still being there, but it shouldn't have as high craftskills.