Infiltrator Core Class - A discussion

[crymerci]

7.  Jman pickmaking? Good luck with that.

It is a bit silly that no one gets above advanced in pick-making, and that infiltrator gets better at cooking than pick-making. There should at least be a Master Locksmith advanced sub.

[Dar]

This may be because the recipies to Picks.. it is an unfortunate fact that picks cant have many difficult to procure ingridients, except metal. Otherwise its just a sliver of one singular material with hooks. At the same time the better quality picks should be complicated to make. So the way its represented is that advanced pick making is enough to make high quality picks, but the failure rate is so high, nobody will flood the market with high quality picks.

The nature of bueglaruly is such that a city cannot maintain more yhrn 2 active burglars without invalidating core aspects of owning apartments

[flurry]

7.  Jman pickmaking? Good luck with that.

It is a bit silly that no one gets above advanced in pick-making

Fences do, actually, according to the help files.

[crymerci]

7.  Jman pickmaking? Good luck with that.

It is a bit silly that no one gets above advanced in pick-making

Fences do, actually, according to the help files.

Interesting, I didn't even think to check that one. (Just came back to the game after many years away.)

[Inky]

As an in between enforcer and miscreant I think it's fine? And it gets the minor advantage of a higher backstab cap?

I think the only problem is that you need to game it a bit and prioritize agility and get some stealth gear to sneak like an oldschool assassin. The only classes that will spot you will be miscreants and the occasional laborer or stalker that are playing indoors. And they'll fold like paper plates if you just happen to spot them and attack them.

I think we got ourselves a decent threshold of choice on the utility-combat spectrum.

[Nao]

I haven't played an infiltrator, so my opinion is theorycrafting.  However....

1. Crossbow use?  Pointless.
2. Advanced shield use? Pointless.
3. Chopping and slashing? Pointless.
4. Advanced sneak/hide/climb?  I have very strong doubts about the utility here.
5. Bash? Pointless.
6. Jman subdue? Strong doubts about the utility. Especially since I strongly suspect that city-elves are the only race that will get any utility out of advanced sneak/hide/climb.
7.  Jman pickmaking? Good luck with that.
8. Peek without steal is a blatant encouragement to PK.
9. Master backstab, as far as I can tell, is not a significant improvement over advanced backstab, except when backstabbing a target under a couple of uncommon circumstances.

Overall...not impressed.  Especially when you compare them to the scout skillset.  Seems like the main reasons to pick infiltrator are: 1) if you don't want to burn your subclass by going enforcer/slipknife to just start with backstab, or 2) you can't be arsed to grind throw on a miscreant.

Assuming they get similar climb and stealth levels as the pilferer - those are far from useless and work quite nicely. Pickmaking lets you work on your pick skill at any level, instead of desperately trying to find lockpicks, paying a fortune, then breaking them after three tries. It's good. Peek is nice for elves.

I'll leave it to someone more combat-focused to comment on the combat skills.

Edit: At a second thought, by the time you branch pick making, you probably have a good source for lockpicks already and don't break them often anymore.

[MeTekillot]

class is named infiltrator but is not the best class for infiltrating? ok seems legit

[roughneck]

There are 15 classes to pick from. There's bound to be some that are 'better' than others, or at least some that are way more popular than others. Infiltrator wouldn't be my pick most of the time, but if this class had master stealth, who in their right mind would ever choose Enforcer? Then we'd be having conversations about how to make that class more competitive and attractive.

I think we as players usually want a class that will make us the most badass, the 'master' in whatever field or vocation our character is going to be in. We don't like settling for our character just being 'good' at something. We want to type 'hide', 'shoot', 'backstab', 'whatever' and have 100% confidence that our character will execute with immaculate precision because as players we know the math behind it. We want to play deep, interesting characters until it comes to skills, then we want robots.

I can see master sap making sense if the class already gets master backstab, or some of the other suggestions in this thread. But, I'm more interested in playing with this whole new class system for a while to see how it works out. I think it will be interesting having a lot more imperfect skillsets, yet having a broader dispersion of skills and combat ability overall. My hope is that the result is more 'nail-biter' situations, where fights are close and brutal. The system we are coming from was pretty one-sided if you knew what you were doing and played to your guild's strengths. For those who were able to exploit the strengths that guilds like assassin and ranger had over others, the power can be difficult to let go of. Hopefully the change makes the game more fun for everyone and less dominated by a few.

[sleepyhead]

I've said it plenty of times before, but I think the root problem is a problem with the stealth system. It's very gamey and binary. You're either invisible (to everyone without high scan) or you're just standing out in the open. There's no way for people without scan to check common hiding places, and there's also no way for a sneaky to know he didn't unstealth 5 rooms back and is now just walking around like an asshole. So the way the whole thing works is weird.

I suspect that the reason people really hate advanced sneak/hide is not necessarily because they need it to be perfect all the time so they can play out their uber-ninja power fantasy, but because you have no way to know whether you are successfully hidden. And if you're not, it's not that your hiding place kinda sucks and someone might suss it out more easily. You're just standing there with your mouth open for everyone to see. And no one can even tell that you are trying to be subtle. So that sucks, especially when you factor in the swift brutality of the crimcode.

I think if we had a more dynamic stealth system involving partial failures that could cause people be easier to spot, rather than totally exposing them without providing any clue that they are exposed, we might see less complaining about sub-master stealth skills.

[Synthesis]

The problem with advanced sneak/hide isn't whether someone can spot you with scan or not.  It's whether or not you passed your hide check at all.

In order to risk doing anything where you might get a crim-flag, you at a minimum have to have a high probability of passing 4 consecutive hide checks:  1) for your initial hide; 2) to move into the room next to the NPC soldier; 3) in the room with the NPC soldier; 4) room past the NPC soldier.

Doing some basic math, here.  Let's say skills are on a scale of 1-100.  Advanced starts at about 60%.  With no stealth gear or agility bonus, at minimum advanced, you have a 60% chance of passing a single hide check.  Your chance of passing 4 consecutive checks is .6*.6*.6*.6 = about 13%.  That's unacceptable.

Top of the advanced range is around 79%.  Your chance of passing 4 consecutive checks is about 39%.  Still absolutely unacceptable risk.

Obviously, I'm not exactly sure where agility (or lack thereof) becomes a bonus or an actual penalty.  I'm not exactly sure what gear is +hide/sneak.  I can make some guesses, but that's about it.  Obviously, my numbers are a little off, because as I've stated, I've recently passed 30 consecutive hide checks at master hide, which would only have a probability of 21% at a 95% base hide chance.  -Maybe- the hide/sneak skills are layered such that at the top ranges, you have a very high chance of passing the initial hide check, and the extra points are only for defeating scan/listen.

However, like I've complained before, when the extended subguilds first came out, I played a c-elf warrior/rogue with vgood agility, and the ability to pass just a basic hide check (vs. non-scanners) at advanced hide, while wearing common 'rinth gear, seemed little better than 50/50.

I'm willing to give Staff the benefit of the doubt that they've actually tested the utility and found it acceptable--until I've actually played an infiltrator--but I feel like sometimes they look only at the code, and not how it actually plays in-game.

[Heade]

Infiltrator wouldn't be my pick most of the time, but if this class had master stealth, who in their right mind would ever choose Enforcer?

Anyone for whom backstab is an ADDITION to their character concept rather than central to it, since enforcers have a difficult path to branching it anyhow. Enforcers are basically warriors, starting with significantly improved combat stats compared to infiltrators and higher caps for combat abilities across the board.

If you pair enforcer with something like outdoorsman, they're a pretty flexible city/wilderness character overall that has essentially the best core combat skills in the game, and they get backstab and sap at master later, just for kicks. There are plenty of other combinations that would be similarly effective for enforcer due to enforcers high skill caps in all the combat skills.

[seidhr]

The problem with advanced sneak/hide isn't whether someone can spot you with scan or not.  It's whether or not you passed your hide check at all.

In order to risk doing anything where you might get a crim-flag, you at a minimum have to have a high probability of passing 4 consecutive hide checks:  1) for your initial hide; 2) to move into the room next to the NPC soldier; 3) in the room with the NPC soldier; 4) room past the NPC soldier.

Doing some basic math, here.  Let's say skills are on a scale of 1-100.  Advanced starts at about 60%.  With no stealth gear or agility bonus, at minimum advanced, you have a 60% chance of passing a single hide check.  Your chance of passing 4 consecutive checks is .6*.6*.6*.6 = about 13%.  That's unacceptable.

Top of the advanced range is around 79%.  Your chance of passing 4 consecutive checks is about 39%.  Still absolutely unacceptable risk.

Obviously, I'm not exactly sure where agility (or lack thereof) becomes a bonus or an actual penalty.  I'm not exactly sure what gear is +hide/sneak.  I can make some guesses, but that's about it.  Obviously, my numbers are a little off, because as I've stated, I've recently passed 30 consecutive hide checks at master hide, which would only have a probability of 21% at a 95% base hide chance.  -Maybe- the hide/sneak skills are layered such that at the top ranges, you have a very high chance of passing the initial hide check, and the extra points are only for defeating scan/listen.

However, like I've complained before, when the extended subguilds first came out, I played a c-elf warrior/rogue with vgood agility, and the ability to pass just a basic hide check (vs. non-scanners) at advanced hide, while wearing common 'rinth gear, seemed little better than 50/50.

I'm willing to give Staff the benefit of the doubt that they've actually tested the utility and found it acceptable--until I've actually played an infiltrator--but I feel like sometimes they look only at the code, and not how it actually plays in-game.

The cap for the rogue subguild is at the lower end of advanced.  The cap for infiltrator is at the upper end of advanced.  Your math for how the checks work is also off, because skills usually don't cap at skill level 100.

I think the name for the infiltrator class maybe isn't the best choice, because sure - it's not as good at infiltrating as miscreant - but it fights quite a bit better.

[Brokkr]

I'm willing to give Staff the benefit of the doubt that they've actually tested the utility and found it acceptable--until I've actually played an infiltrator--but I feel like sometimes they look only at the code, and not how it actually plays in-game.

I have years of experience as a player with the code.  Then I looked at the actual code.  And then I put together a spreadsheet to analyze the stealth code.  You don't mention two huge factors in deriving the reasonably approximate percentage, and mention but don't take into account a third.  I am not sure how you would expect your numbers to be anywhere close to reasonable.

I took all those factors into account, which players could well be not even aware of, given that most people seem to have just gone by getting their skill as high as they could to deal with stealth.  It is a bit more nuanced now.

As for Infiltrator, it was meant to be the middle ground between enforcer and miscreant.  Some of the combat power from one side, some of the survival power from the other.  Was it meant to be the best at infiltrating ever?  No.  I didn't approach any of the classes based on giving them what the name suggested.  I tried to give names to skillsets.  And even then...player professed "useless" skills like chopping/slashing/bash are still useful for "infiltrating" someplace like the Byn and not have them figure out you are a stealth class?

I'm not sure where apparently I've said I hate the assassin play style?  There wasn't a place for a class that was as strong in all aspects of assassination as the assassin was in the new dynamic.  Stealth was not nuanced at all.  And, of course, the desire that an Infiltrator, or any other class, doesn't need to always play like one thing.  They don't need to be an assassin.

[Synthesis]

1) I don't know all the factors that go into the stealth equations, because I'm not on staff, and I don't have anyone leaking code to me.  My back-of-napkin-math assumes ceteris paribus for the purpose of being concise and generalized.

2) I do, however, have reliable methods of testing whether sneak and hide are working, which is really all that matters.

3) Chopping/slashing are useless because weapon skills take so damn long to improve that it would be pretty foolish to try to game that.  Infiltrators already have to train piercing and bludgeoning.   Getting both of those to (advanced) is a monumental task.  In other words, anyone could just carry an axe around and pretend to have the skill.  To convince people that you actually -have- the chopping skill and you aren't a sneaky-rogue-type, you'd have to spend so much time training chopping weapons up that by the time you're done with it, you may be permanently adversely affecting your ability to train your core weapon skills.

[Armaddict]

As for Infiltrator, it was meant to be the middle ground between enforcer and miscreant.  Some of the combat power from one side, some of the survival power from the other.

Despite people's conception that I'm out here screaming for the assassin class, this is actually my concern above.  The miscreant is supposed to be a mix between the combat and non-combat, but instead has been made into a specialist of that genre.  Because of the gameplay of that genre, the criminal, it has resulted in greater lethality than its light combat adjacency.  Increasing stealth was brought up as a compromise to allow the infiltrator to have the same 'genre' of lethality that the miscreant has, but do it better.

In the original class feedback thread, I suggested other courses as well, such as removing parry from the miscreant or removing its ambush potential.  But if you're looking to keep miscreant the same, than making it 'inherit' its combat lethality from the more combat-heavy class seems appropriate.  I lean more heavily towards making the 'mixed' tier actual masters of nothing; they will not be the specialist of their type, they will just be able to engage competently in all of it.

Was it meant to be the best at infiltrating ever?  No.  I didn't approach any of the classes based on giving them what the name suggested.  I tried to give names to skillsets.

You've reiterated this several times and I don't put stock in the names based off those responses.  We did warn you though, that misnomers as class names were going to get brought up all the time.

And even then...player professed "useless" skills like chopping/slashing/bash are still useful for "infiltrating" someplace like the Byn and not have them figure out you are a stealth class?

Valid, but ultimately kind of counterproductive to count that as a 'boon' of the skillset when it doesn't really align with the rest of the skillset.  We've already discussed how much the infiltrator sacrifices for these boons, but counting them as boons makes it altogether against the point.  One of the criticisms I had was that it looked like we had too many skills crammed into too many classes, making a very 'everyone gets everything except crafting skills' feel.  I think specialization in weapon classes for each theme, with 'general' receiving the most and best diversified weapon skills, addresses this best.  Let subclasses go for the rest of it, which people keep saying about every other criticism of skill levels.  If a criminal class wants to use axes?  They should probably sub for it or play the enforcer, the pure-combat themed criminal character.

I'm not sure where apparently I've said I hate the assassin play style?  There wasn't a place for a class that was as strong in all aspects of assassination as the assassin was in the new dynamic.

In the class discussion page, when this previous relationship between miscreant/infiltrator was already being discussed, you made mention of not wanting the assassin gameplay present in the new system.  I'd argue that the infiltrator spot is perfect for that gameplay, insofar as you aren't treating the mixed tier as a specialist tier instead of a...well...mixed one.

[Armaddict]

Another concern that I had, with a new idea (which may be ported over to the current subclass discussion):

I talked about the poisoning skill, how it was odd that the mixed class got the best poisoning with it generally being a lethality-based endeavor...have we ever considered capping it to high journeyman on -all- main classes that got it, and moving mastery of it to a subguild or two?

Idea being...it's a very Apothecary-like thing to be that confident with mixing and handling of high-risk solutions.  If you have to sacrifice a subguild of utility for one in specialization, we'd still have master poisoners, no doubt...but we'd also probably see a true rise in the use of common poisons vs extreme ones.  Might just be a band-aid, but it would also address one of my personal 'wtfs' about the relationship between the two, and maybe have a nice influence on the game world as a whole as well.

[Brokkr]

Still don't see anywhere I said I hate assassins.  I said things about assassins, but I think if you read over it, you'll find nothing I said was related to my personal view of them.  The game style was simply spread over three classes.

At some point I consciously moved away from using "mixed" like Nergal had to using "survival".  This was specifically because there aren't two poles for the dynamic, there are three (combat, survival, crafting).  So its not a simple linear progression.

[Miradus]

Brokkr, how "finished" are these classes?

For instance, might we expect eventually pilferer to branch parry like adventurer? Or Enforcer to get scan like raider, etc?

[Brokkr]

We are already moved on to other things.

Maybe someone revisits them someday, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to do so before enough time has passed that folks can relay their experiences, rather than their theorycrafting, with them.

[Armaddict]

At some point I consciously moved away from using "mixed" like Nergal had to using "survival".

So...combat...to survival...to crafting, but with survival gaining as strong of combat skills as the space between?  Or strong enough that they no one will tell the difference between them until longevity on the characters comes, aside from that the survival tier is just more usable in most ways up until that point?

All I know is that I see a burglar+pickpocket class that is less helpless in combat and we're saying that's the survival tree despite them being the most able to wreak havoc and be most aggressive due to the most reliable escapes and safety in creating advantages, and the class-type that seems most suited to catching it is unable to past 3 days of playing time, when its advantages are supposed to be in full swing from early combat gains.

Maybe drop miscreant's scan?  Make the most stealthy the least able to hunt other stealthies?

[Delirium]

I'm reading over this thread and honestly the only real takeaway I have is backstab is not the holy grail of an assassin.

It's one tool in the box of someone who wants to be a professional killer. If you feel like you can't have a successful killer without master hide + master backstab, I don't know what to say that will make you feel better, but I disagree. Furthermore, I think you're all getting too caught up in this theoretical silent ninja-esque killer archetype.  Don't get a perfect kill? Good. That creates interest. Want to be perfect? Too bad, this is Armageddon.

The potential roles these skillsets offer is also far broader than the one issue that is being worried about here.

[Armaddict]

I'm reading over this thread and honestly the only real takeaway I have is backstab is not the holy grail of an assassin.

It's one tool in the box of someone who wants to be a professional killer. If you feel like you can't have a successful killer without master hide + master backstab, I don't know what to say that will make you feel better, but I disagree. Furthermore, I think you're all getting too caught up in this theoretical silent ninja-esque killer archetype.  Don't get a perfect kill? Good. That creates interest. Want to be perfect? Too bad, this is Armageddon.

The potential roles these skillsets offer is also far broader than the one issue that is being worried about here.

Despite people's conception that I'm out here screaming for the assassin class, this is actually my concern above.  The miscreant is supposed to be a mix between the combat and non-combat, but instead has been made into a specialist of that genre.  Because of the gameplay of that genre, the criminal, it has resulted in greater lethality than its light combat adjacency.  Increasing stealth was brought up as a compromise to allow the infiltrator to have the same 'genre' of lethality that the miscreant has, but do it better.

In the original class feedback thread, I suggested other courses as well, such as removing parry from the miscreant or removing its ambush potential.  But if you're looking to keep miscreant the same, than making it 'inherit' its combat lethality from the more combat-heavy class seems appropriate.  I lean more heavily towards making the 'mixed' tier actual masters of nothing; they will not be the specialist of their type, they will just be able to engage competently in all of it.

The discussion is not 'Give me hide with maxxed backstab' or 'I can't be a professional killer now', it's that miscreant will do everything the infiltrator does better -except- join the Byn, which is not exactly a far broader role set as you say.

The repeated defense against these things is that there's some sort of selfish ulterior motive rather than people looking at a brand spankin' new class list and saying that it could use tweaking to more fully encompass the capabilities of each -and- put them objectively side by side for how they interact.

[Miradus]

We are already moved on to other things.

Maybe someone revisits them someday, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to do so before enough time has passed that folks can relay their experiences, rather than their theorycrafting, with them.

That's all I needed to hear. Thanks.

I like the new classes, and while I personally would have moved some tacks around on the bulletin board here or there, I don't have any major quibbles. I have more than enough choices available to me now, if the karma regen bug gets fixed.

[Synthesis]

I'm pretty sure miscreants aren't going to top out combat-wise better than infiltrators, unless the folks who put the classes together totally dropped the ball.  But...again...I'd have to max out one of each to be certain.  There could be in the vicinity of a 15-20 point difference in what "advanced" means to each one of those.  That's a lot of points for a weapon skill, and it isn't taking into account base O/D or training rate.

However, I will say that old-school pickpockets could get -way- better at combat than anyone ever gave them credit for on the GDB.  It's just that most people couldn't keep a pickpocket alive long enough to see the day.

[mansa]

I'd like to change the name.

"rouge"

"outlawl"

"subtley"

"assasssin"

"assailant"

"goon"