Stalker and Archery.

[ShaiHulud]

I'm sorry, I'm really f'n sorry. I was grieving my last ranger ever, and struggling with the stalker scout split for how to achieve what I wanted for a new, similar concept to a ranger again. Many responses have helped and engaged my understanding and inspiration. Thank you. Where are we now with this?                                                                               

[Eyeball]

The can of worms has already been opened. 

[Inks]

Oh. On topic Stalker and Scout are both pretty good. Scout is most like old school ranger.

Ranger branched throw at master archery, it is easier now. So not sure what OP was going on about tbh.

Try branching disarm from kick or sap from bludgeon like other classes.

[Cind]

From my experiences with the new classes that I have played as at this point, outdoor classes seem to have better all-around utility outdoors, and the ones meant for either stealth or city play have better city utility, with the sort of skills that go with living in the city. For example, the wilderness ones seemed to be better out of chargen at mining, than the city and general classes that also start at novice forage (as forage levels control mining ability.)


I could be imagining it, but I think this is intentional.

I would think Scout and Stalker would either be near-equal with noncombat utility skills out of chargen, or equal. I'm guessing Scout has a bit of a boost, but its probably a small one.

If you're on the fence about new classes and are going to try a character with an unskilled job or something like that, or someone who's being paid to sit around and talk, I'd go for something that is directly related anyway to your job, like a city-based or wilderness-based. I think that's still going to matter.

[Greve]

And for heavy combat characters, a fighter to test the new skills.  And because I was worried, because of Nergal's changes, whether what I was doing with the heavy classes would make it so someone couldn't even reach caps. And the results of that? I got to insanely high off/def levels.  I maxed two weapon skills getting to insane high off/def levels.  I maxed another weapon skill after I already had the insane high level of off/def. And then I promptly stored the character having tested what I wanted, because it was boring AF. Normally I wouldn't talk about it, but it seems folks have this idea that it isn't possible.  It is definately possible, it just isn't likely.

I'm very skeptical that you did this using methods that are readily available to players. You did not max three weapon skills with the same character doing anything that any of us can realistically expect to be able to do, or even know about. Since you apparently didn't do it by sparring, I can't even begin to imagine what method will let you max out three different weapon skills while being legitimate enough that a staff member will do it. More likely you had to resort to completely absurd methods that, if done by a player, would earn us a litany of scathing account notes and punitive animations. It probably involved tricks and locations that many players wouldn't even know exist.

I've had plenty of characters that got to that infamous skill plateau, which happens very quickly. Almost nothing will dodge you from then on, certainly nothing that you can go out and fight on a regular basis without taking such extreme liberties with the concept of roleplaying that it can't possibly be held as a standard. There's a long list of valid character concepts for which conventional sparring isn't an option at all. You said it yourself: you ditched the character because it was boring AF. Haven't you just identified the problem? We don't want to resort to playing dwarves so we can concoct a focus of "marry a mantis" to try and justify fighting mantis seated in the dark every day. We want to be able to get past the unsatisfyingly low plateau doing things that make sense.

you won't probably get to the upper echelons of fighting prowess unless you put your character at risk. Some would say this is crazy.

As others have also noted, most of the risks that one can take while still doing anything that can be called roleplaying are risks that get you nowhere. Namino pointed it out very plainly: the things that are dangerous will, for the most part, never dodge you. The things that will dodge you are, for the most part, never dangerous. There's a select few highly obscure exceptions, but I'm not climbing a mountain to fight kiyet lions on my ass with a character that has no possible explanation for doing so, because I know staff will fry me if I get caught doing that. I've tried all the other shit that's on the fringes of acceptability like packs of tarantulas, squads of gith, big-game hunting, etc. Doesn't get you anywhere. You stop missing before you've even hit <advanced>.

My last raider ended up at journeyman in his chosen weapon skill. I don't think journeyman is the threshold to the "upper echelons of fighting prowess." Here's a list of things that are quite dangerous but no longer provided any progress at that point:
Gith
Mantis
Braxat
Dujat
Anakore
Drov beetle
Rantarri
Gwoshi
Bahamet
Tarantula
Tembo
Carru

Often I had to run for my life after fighting these things, without having seen a single dodge. I searched high and low for anything that could dodge and there just wasn't anything. I didn't travel to the very ends of the world to shit all over the spirit of the game by fighting some obscure creature that I had no reason to even know about, but maybe I should have. I might have been able to eke out a little more piercing skill by fighting seated with a crooked arrow in hand, but we're not supposed to do that shit. We get punished if caught.

And that's to say nothing of the characters who just can't go and do these things. If you're stuck in the Arm of the Dragon, say goodbye to any such ambitions. Sparring is a dead end save for the aforementioned stars-aligning miracle where you get to rub shoulders with some long-lived fighter who has that mythological combination of high defense and a willingness to spar regularly. With most of the clanned combat chars I've played, there just wasn't one of those around. Simply didn't exist, and it was raw dumb luck the couple of times it did. It wasn't me taking risks, it wasn't me being ambitious and diligent and making things happen through glorious, game-enriching roleplay. It was just that the right dude happened to be in the clan at the same time as me.

I really just want a game where I don't have to do absurd shit that barely qualifies as roleplay when I get that occasional urge to play a fighter who's genuinely good. It's not some kind of crime to want that. That doesn't make me some scumbag who's just obsessed with seeing <master> everywhere so I can PK all who stand in my way. A good player is not measured by whether or not he cares about his combat skills. That's not a sensible way to think about a MUD where murder, corruption and betrayal is supposed to be what we care most about. Why this bizarre social stigma against those who want to explore that aspect of the skill system? If we're not supposed to care about combat skills, why have them at all?  There's a whole category of classes that pretty much only have combat skills.

If crazy, death-defying adventures were what it took to get the last few notches then sure, why not. Make us fight silt-horrors with our arms tied behind our backs to become the best warrior that ever lived. But that's not the way it works. That stuff is what it takes to get past the point you reached in a RL month. You can't tell me it makes sense that that's all it takes to get to where you have to do Conan-style shit to get better, but that's the reality in most cases.

[roughneck]

And for heavy combat characters, a fighter to test the new skills.  And because I was worried, because of Nergal's changes, whether what I was doing with the heavy classes would make it so someone couldn't even reach caps. And the results of that? I got to insanely high off/def levels.  I maxed two weapon skills getting to insane high off/def levels.  I maxed another weapon skill after I already had the insane high level of off/def. And then I promptly stored the character having tested what I wanted, because it was boring AF. Normally I wouldn't talk about it, but it seems folks have this idea that it isn't possible.  It is definately possible, it just isn't likely.

I'm very skeptical that you did this using methods that are readily available to players. You did not max three weapon skills with the same character doing anything that any of us can realistically expect to be able to do, or even know about. Since you apparently didn't do it by sparring, I can't even begin to imagine what method will let you max out three different weapon skills while being legitimate enough that a staff member will do it. More likely you had to resort to completely absurd methods that, if done by a player, would earn us a litany of scathing account notes and punitive animations. It probably involved tricks and locations that many players wouldn't even know exist.

I've had plenty of characters that got to that infamous skill plateau, which happens very quickly. Almost nothing will dodge you from then on, certainly nothing that you can go out and fight on a regular basis without taking such extreme liberties with the concept of roleplaying that it can't possibly be held as a standard. There's a long list of valid character concepts for which conventional sparring isn't an option at all. You said it yourself: you ditched the character because it was boring AF. Haven't you just identified the problem? We don't want to resort to playing dwarves so we can concoct a focus of "marry a mantis" to try and justify fighting mantis seated in the dark every day. We want to be able to get past the unsatisfyingly low plateau doing things that make sense.

you won't probably get to the upper echelons of fighting prowess unless you put your character at risk. Some would say this is crazy.

As others have also noted, most of the risks that one can take while still doing anything that can be called roleplaying are risks that get you nowhere. Namino pointed it out very plainly: the things that are dangerous will, for the most part, never dodge you. The things that will dodge you are, for the most part, never dangerous. There's a select few highly obscure exceptions, but I'm not climbing a mountain to fight kiyet lions on my ass with a character that has no possible explanation for doing so, because I know staff will fry me if I get caught doing that. I've tried all the other shit that's on the fringes of acceptability like packs of tarantulas, squads of gith, big-game hunting, etc. Doesn't get you anywhere. You stop missing before you've even hit <advanced>.

My last raider ended up at journeyman in his chosen weapon skill. I don't think journeyman is the threshold to the "upper echelons of fighting prowess." Here's a list of things that are quite dangerous but no longer provided any progress at that point:
Gith
Mantis
Braxat
Dujat
Anakore
Drov beetle
Rantarri
Gwoshi
Bahamet
Tarantula
Tembo
Carru

Often I had to run for my life after fighting these things, without having seen a single dodge. I searched high and low for anything that could dodge and there just wasn't anything. I didn't travel to the very ends of the world to shit all over the spirit of the game by fighting some obscure creature that I had no reason to even know about, but maybe I should have. I might have been able to eke out a little more piercing skill by fighting seated with a crooked arrow in hand, but we're not supposed to do that shit. We get punished if caught.

And that's to say nothing of the characters who just can't go and do these things. If you're stuck in the Arm of the Dragon, say goodbye to any such ambitions. Sparring is a dead end save for the aforementioned stars-aligning miracle where you get to rub shoulders with some long-lived fighter who has that mythological combination of high defense and a willingness to spar regularly. With most of the clanned combat chars I've played, there just wasn't one of those around. Simply didn't exist, and it was raw dumb luck the couple of times it did. It wasn't me taking risks, it wasn't me being ambitious and diligent and making things happen through glorious, game-enriching roleplay. It was just that the right dude happened to be in the clan at the same time as me.

I really just want a game where I don't have to do absurd shit that barely qualifies as roleplay when I get that occasional urge to play a fighter who's genuinely good. It's not some kind of crime to want that. That doesn't make me some scumbag who's just obsessed with seeing <master> everywhere so I can PK all who stand in my way. A good player is not measured by whether or not he cares about his combat skills. That's not a sensible way to think about a MUD where murder, corruption and betrayal is supposed to be what we care most about. Why this bizarre social stigma against those who want to explore that aspect of the skill system? If we're not supposed to care about combat skills, why have them at all?  There's a whole category of classes that pretty much only have combat skills.

If crazy, death-defying adventures were what it took to get the last few notches then sure, why not. Make us fight silt-horrors with our arms tied behind our backs to become the best warrior that ever lived. But that's not the way it works. That stuff is what it takes to get past the point you reached in a RL month. You can't tell me it makes sense that that's all it takes to get to where you have to do Conan-style shit to get better, but that's the reality in most cases.

Those creatures don't all belong in the same category. There's only two there that would stand any chance of helping you out from a weapon skill perspective, from my experience.

I think the new system is weird and doesn't make a lot of intuitive sense... but the old system was clunky and didn't make a lot of sense intuitively either.

I do think IC motivation for combat PC's to do pretty crazy things just to test themselves and improve, even when it means risking their lives, has a lot more validity than we give credence. A warrior testing them-self, and coming out the other side stronger, on something really dangerous makes more sense than testing them-self on a small rodent while laying down. You can look in history to find examples, but you don't have to go that far, every highschool has a kid (who most people thought was crazy) that will fight anybody and gets tougher and tougher as they gain real experience, every MMA club has guys that get better by getting experience in real matches, and I'm sure the same goes in the military for soldiers that have battle experience and those that don't. Training shouldn't be enough to make your PC max skills.

On the sparring partner situation - it makes sense that not every clan has a PC that can give you the fails that you need for gains. IRL there is only one John Danaher in BJJ, and people fly all over North America to train with him, and he makes all kinds of cash for it, and I'm sure there are sorts of other IRL examples. Likewise, PC's that have achieved the level of being able to provide significant skill-gains should be able to demand a high-price from employers and trainees. Go find a badass and spend coins on training, if you're PC is scared to do it the hard way, instead of spending coins on luxury items and apartments.

[Inks]

Someone mention spiders tho. Everything everyone said is completely valid to say but spiders dont seem to be mentioned on any of these graphs or list and they are superior to turaal very quickly.

These must be being ommited to prove a point or something? Again I agree with most of what is being said but spiders are great. And spooky. And dangerous. And fun.

I don't mind the current system but was defo calling out the 3 weapon skills mastered in rl month thing.

[rinthrat]

I feel like stalkers have a significant edge because they can reliably spot and count them.

[Greve]

Those creatures don't all belong in the same category. There's only two there that would stand any chance of helping you out from a weapon skill perspective, from my experience.

That list comprises just about everything that you can go and fight at will without inviting serious questions about twinking. How do you figure that only two of them fit the bill of a worthwhile challenge? Several of them can kill a human in two or three hits. All of them are ICly considered dangerous. If not these, what the hell is supposed to qualify as something you should be able to gain skills on? Again, I'm not talking about reaching master, I'm talking about getting past the early- or mid-journeyman. With any other kind of skill, having journeyman means you're barely competent.

The thing that's wrong with the code is the totally arbitrary nature of what qualifies as a sufficiently risky fight. It's all down to whether or not the mobile has enough defense and agility. Nothing else matters. It can be a literal dragon that breathes fire and has five hundred hit points, but if the builder didn't give it enough defense to dodge attacks from a militia private, it somehow doesn't count as risking your life where skillgains are concerned. You can't begin to look for logic in that. Is a mekillot not a risky fight? Because it sure won't get you to advanced.

I do think IC motivation for combat PC's to do pretty crazy things just to test themselves and improve, even when it means risking their lives, has a lot more validity than we give credence.

The problem isn't that that's possible. The problem is the lack of equal alternatives. It's wrong that going on suicidal adventures to obscure places in search of anything nimble is just about the only way to see meaningful improvement to combat skills past an obstacle that arrives far too quickly.

On the sparring partner situation - it makes sense that not every clan has a PC that can give you the fails that you need for gains.

No it doesn't! We're talking about entire armies and mercenary companies! It makes no sense at all. Most of the time, becoming a soldier is the very worst way to learn to fight, which is the exact opposite of how it should be. It makes absolutely zero sense that because there happens to be no long-lived warrior amongst the five or so active players in the world's greatest army, that entire army just loses the ability to adequately train.

And yet again, the whole problem boils down to the fact that gains are gated exclusively behind getting your attacks dodged. It's such an artificial construct that there's no point trying to rationalize it. You don't need to be an already great fighter to get stuck, it can happen even before you've reached journeyman. A couple of years ago I played in the AoD and there just didn't happen to be anyone in the clan with more than a month or two on their PCs, so nobody could dodge me at apprentice. Should one just accept that this was the limit of training for soldiers in Allanak that year? Of course not. That's completely absurd. This was of course an unusual situation as there tends to be at least someone who can get you past apprentice, but even then, you're most likely getting stuck at journeyman instead. The amount of defense necessary for people to get past journeyman from sparring with you is so high that more often than not, there's nobody in any given clan who has it.

IRL there is only one John Danaher in BJJ, and people fly all over North America to train with him, and he makes all kinds of cash for it, and I'm sure there are sorts of other IRL examples. Likewise, PC's that have achieved the level of being able to provide significant skill-gains should be able to demand a high-price from employers and trainees. Go find a badass and spend coins on training, if you're PC is scared to do it the hard way, instead of spending coins on luxury items and apartments.

Training with John Danaher is not a requisite for obtaining the purple belt. If this thread had been full of people complaining that it was too hard to get the last five points toward the skillcap, what you said might make sense. Since we're talking about the prohibitive difficulty of getting past a level which for all other skills barely qualifies as competent, it doesn't.

[Riev]

I just want to jump on the train that "Getting weapon skills isn't difficult, and in some cases isn't even very risky, but the behavior we have to engage in commonly warrants a 'world response' from staff that then BECOMES risky."

I found a way to get Gavin to branch slashing weapons into knives, because since day one my goal was for him to be a close-combat brawler, not an elite fighter. But we can't start with knives, and I kind of gave it up. Once I found out how to branch, I was temp-banned, chastised, got account notes, and I don't think I ever got the knife-weapons I ordered.

I had to go to pretty stupid extremes and, as a top-tier warrior, joined a lesser organization just to justify that I was "hunting" these lesser creatures. Again, it wasn't HARD, it was stupid to have to do. I would GLADLY have paid 1000 coins per session for a PC or NPC that would get me a good workout, but that is an unrealistic requirement.

[roughneck]

I was reading the complaint that it's difficult to achieve upper echelons/mastery skill levels.

I think combat proficiency is still very attainable.

[Asanadas]

I'm here to echo Greve and say everything he said is correct. Completely on the money. So much so that I had to log in and comment. My Arm of the Dragon Sergeant reached that plateau of never being able to get better somewhere around high journeyman. I couldn't justify going off the plantation to go fight gortoks while sitting in the dark; and my clan staffer at that time, Cavaticus, completely shot down the attempt I made to contract the Byn with my money to get some training.

Gating skill progression behind misses is a flawed, anti-roleplay system. It's the most amateur implementation of a combat progression system conceived, designed to work simply and across the board with a hack and slash MUD. This is supposedly one of the last great RPIs still alive. Why do these anti-RPI features remain in the game?

I encourage the dev team to take just one more note from WotC (among the many already taken) and implement a Challenge Rating for each monster. Have your NPC's challenge rating calculated dynamically according to their stats. Make it so that when you fight someone with a higher CR than you, you gain skills. This would take a month at most with a good sprint team.

Overload the assess command to compare your CR intuitively against others (with random variance). Give players a pathway of progression short of twinking. Spend a few hours implementing a code solution, rather than an indefinite amount of maintenance hours punishing players. The game would be better off for it.

[Brokkr]

Some folks seem to have a lot of emotion involved with this topic. There is also a lot of fuzziness, because of words like "competent" and "maxed" that are not well defined.  And a lot of worrying about a character, rather than the gameworld.  Which brings up a point I would like to reiterate:

That would not be desirable from a staff perspective, as players are on the same scale as our NPCs.

Many games, if a PC can get to 100 skill in combat, NPCs can get to 150 or 200 in that thing.  That is not how it works here for some key skills. Instead of capping PCs at the 100 out of 200 mark, Arm has what you call the plateau.  The game as currently designed leaves the ability to get more skilled than that, but it becomes more similar to how games with open ended skills work, although instead of decreasing benefit over a steady skill gain rate Arm has taken the direction of making skill gains harder and harder to come by.

Arm could have taken the approach of capping skills below what they currently cap at for combat.  For 99%+ of characters, it would effectively be the same.  It would also mean that the effective skill learning life of a character was much shorter, which is not good in a game where some characters have 100+ DAYS of playtime.  You may throw rocks at the Arm design, but when you are doing so I see very little in the way of being on the same page as the gameworld goals.  Like making it so new characters see real progression, but 100+ Day characters likely still have some potential for progression, without letting them become game breakingly powerful?

When the goal is to make it so most combat characters become competent, but very few get beyond that, because it starts to make the game world wonky? You can't approach a system like this with just how it impact your character and their progression. That is one piece of the overall system.  I am sorry if this is mentally infuriating to achiever types that would like to go beyond competent, beyond really, really good and like to know they are the "best". But the way it is set up now, those kinds of characters, while possible, sort of break the system, especially if they are together. So the goal isn't to provide a realistic pathway that a soldier or Byn member can get to that point, the goal is to limit who can get to that point.  While from a character perspective I understand how this may seem unrealistic, but from a gameworld gameplay perspective it is absolutely realistic.

ps-A RL month?  Where did that come from?  Not anything I said.

[Riev]

I mentioned in Discord, an idea that kinda sucks but bear with me:

Mastery is like getting your Black Belt in Karate. You have "mastered" the basic techniques of slashing a sword. You are not a Grandmaster, you aren't a 1st Dan. You spent a few dedicated years to your study, and now you are a "master".

What if, at least for combat, "Master" wasn't 90/100, but "master" was around the high Jman/Low Advanced plateau that we're at. So when I type skills, I see "Master".

Leave it up to roleplay, logs, and seeking out advanced warriors (NPC or PC) to learn from, and staff can add 10-15 points to your skill to put you at that "step above" everyone else. Attainable, but you have to apply for it and add more than sparring turaal while seated.

I mean... that... or loosen up on the judgement when you see us fighting gortok in the dark or at least start the conversation about why we feel we need to, rather than immediate clownhammer bans. Regardless of if its possible or reasonable, the way you've designed the game is to force combat characters to do some really silly and out of character to advance, then punish us for wanting to advance.

Yet my merchant can fail to make an arrow 20 times in a row and nobody animates a dozen gith raiding party.

[Feco]

I dunno why people do weird shit to advance.  I don't pretend to understand the code, but I think people who do weird shit have very strange misconceptions about how the game works.  It strictly isn't necessary.

I've played at least one combat PC, who wasn't a half-giant, who could take on some of the nastiest NPCs in the game.  The PC got that way with regular fighting and training.  Nothing wonky.  The PC didn't even hunt, so there wasn't much for purposeful animal fighting, and certainly no fighting gortok in the dark.

They definitely didn't have peak combat abilities, either -- they weren't "maxed out."  You do not have to be maxed out to be an absolute monster.  I know some people get joy out of making progression, but the current code lets you get to the point that you're, quiet seriously, possibly game breaking.  If you were to act smartly and irresponsibly, you could do a lot of serious coded damage, and the only thing that can possibly kill you is a mix of bad luck and poor decisions.

[Riev]

I think the point though, Feco, is that for those of us who ARE achievers, we want to see that we CAN be "master" at something. Bragging rights be damned, it feels good to know you achieved that "final level".

You can be "more than competent" at combat at this plateau. But this plateau has you at Journeyman in your skills. Before we could SEE our skill levels, we knew how strong we were by what we COULDN'T fight... but you can't have a Bynner go off and fight gith and mantis and stupid stuff for "no reason" just to find a challenge, mostly because there are the stories that when you DO, staff animate something to kick your butt.

I want to be a master slashing. On any of my PCs that attained it, I didn't kill a single other PC with those skills. I didn't even go to RPTs for it.

But I used it as a plot point that... yes. I AM a master in this skill, so you should learn from me.

#makeMasterMatter

[Delirium]

So... serious question here... what would you do when you did hit master?

What would keep you engaged in the character?

Achievement is great and I definitely have some of those tendencies, but you have got to learn to love the journey. Otherwise once you've ticked off all those skill boxes you are just gonna be sitting there like "now what?"

[Riev]

So... serious question here... what would you do when you did hit master?

What would keep you engaged in the character?

Achievement is great and I definitely have some of those tendencies, but you have got to learn to love the journey. Otherwise once you've ticked off all those skill boxes you are just gonna be sitting there like "now what?"

I haven't theorycrafted beyond that yet. I toyed with like "Each class can Grandmaster 3 skills that they get to Master, but these can only be taught through RP, either by a GM PC or an NPC", but ... that's what guilds are for in the first place.

I mean I'm fine with "I'm master slashing, but I still miss, so obviously I need to work on my offense since my technique is damned good now." Learn how to fight gith for a while, learn how to fight mantis, study their combat, make a thing out of it. You don't need the misses for SKILL anymore, unless you also want to be a master with the axe. If you lower the caps, there's a better chance of "mastering" more than one skill.

Unfortunately, its combat focused and I can't imagine having to be a crafter and can only Grandmaster tanning, woodworking, and haggle and suddenly you're forever stuck. I like the idea of eventual specialization but it doesn't work for Arm's current climate.

[MeTekillot]

Also I don't know who said something about enforcer climb, but unless you're an elf I wouldn't rely too heavily on using it except as an escape maneuver upwards. Fails often enough at cap, even with tools, that you're gonna eat shit when it counts eventually.

[Veselka]

I dunno why people do weird shit to advance.  I don't pretend to understand the code, but I think people who do weird shit have very strange misconceptions about how the game works.  It strictly isn't necessary.

I've played at least one combat PC, who wasn't a half-giant, who could take on some of the nastiest NPCs in the game.  The PC got that way with regular fighting and training.  Nothing wonky.  The PC didn't even hunt, so there wasn't much for purposeful animal fighting, and certainly no fighting gortok in the dark.

They definitely didn't have peak combat abilities, either -- they weren't "maxed out."  You do not have to be maxed out to be an absolute monster.  I know some people get joy out of making progression, but the current code lets you get to the point that you're, quiet seriously, possibly game breaking.  If you were to act smartly and irresponsibly, you could do a lot of serious coded damage, and the only thing that can possibly kill you is a mix of bad luck and poor decisions.

I agree...I mean, my last combat-heavy PC wasn't advanced in a weapon skill, and could easily take on 6-10 Gith at once with the use of disarm/parry being what it was.

[Greve]

Some folks seem to have a lot of emotion involved with this topic. There is also a lot of fuzziness, because of words like "competent" and "maxed" that are not well defined.  And a lot of worrying about a character, rather than the gameworld.  Which brings up a point I would like to reiterate:

That would not be desirable from a staff perspective, as players are on the same scale as our NPCs.

Many games, if a PC can get to 100 skill in combat, NPCs can get to 150 or 200 in that thing.  That is not how it works here for some key skills. Instead of capping PCs at the 100 out of 200 mark, Arm has what you call the plateau.  The game as currently designed leaves the ability to get more skilled than that, but it becomes more similar to how games with open ended skills work, although instead of decreasing benefit over a steady skill gain rate Arm has taken the direction of making skill gains harder and harder to come by.

Arm could have taken the approach of capping skills below what they currently cap at for combat.  For 99%+ of characters, it would effectively be the same.  It would also mean that the effective skill learning life of a character was much shorter, which is not good in a game where some characters have 100+ DAYS of playtime.  You may throw rocks at the Arm design, but when you are doing so I see very little in the way of being on the same page as the gameworld goals.  Like making it so new characters see real progression, but 100+ Day characters likely still have some potential for progression, without letting them become game breakingly powerful?

When the goal is to make it so most combat characters become competent, but very few get beyond that, because it starts to make the game world wonky? You can't approach a system like this with just how it impact your character and their progression. That is one piece of the overall system.  I am sorry if this is mentally infuriating to achiever types that would like to go beyond competent, beyond really, really good and like to know they are the "best". But the way it is set up now, those kinds of characters, while possible, sort of break the system, especially if they are together. So the goal isn't to provide a realistic pathway that a soldier or Byn member can get to that point, the goal is to limit who can get to that point.  While from a character perspective I understand how this may seem unrealistic, but from a gameworld gameplay perspective it is absolutely realistic.

The problem here is that you've designed all these cool classes, right? You can pick one class and get a bunch of crafts, another to get a bunch of stealth shit, and a third to get better at fighting than the rest. Journeyman weapon skills is the domain of the very worst classes with regards to combat. Yet this is where even the best combat classes will typically plateau, moreso now than ever because some start with higher offense than even warriors did before, and your offense vs their defense determines skillgain chances. I realize there are other factors in combat besides just weapon skills, but that is one of the primary ones.

Before the new classes, it was easier to stomach getting stuck at journeyman slashing or whatever with a warrior or ranger because you still had a guild monopoly on a lot of other things. Subguilds aside, warriors were the only ones with disarm, bash and kick, and rangers were the only ones with high archery and all that wilderness stuff. The new classes have so much overlap in comparison to the guilds that there's not the same kind of "it's okay" factor. Being stuck at journeyman weapon skills with a raider feels pretty bad when you could just have made a scout or stalker instead.

ps-A RL month?  Where did that come from?  Not anything I said.

I said that. That's about how long it takes to reach the point where nothing you can realistically fight on a regular basis will let you improve anymore. That's the whole crux of the issue, Brokkr. I get what you mean about relativity in power levels and all that, but at the end of the day, we're playing a game where weapon skills stop improving through normal gameplay at such an early point that it just doesn't feel right.

And aside from all this talk of weapon skills themselves, I would still like to hear your sentiments on this irritating issue where it's all gated behind nothing but dodges, and where the hidden offense skill becomes your enemy in the long run. Could we at least get something that counteracts the latter? It's such a stupid problem. Offense and defense represent "general combat experience," right? Why, then, does it hinder improvement? How is it explained that the more experience you have with fighting, the harder it becomes to add a new fighting style to your repertoire? Reality works in the stark opposite way.

I suggest at least two changes:

1) Parry and block qualifies for skillgains. It was once hinted that they would, but we all know they don't.

2) Weapon skill, not offense, determines whether or not your target's defense is high enough to gain.

[In Dreams]

Summarising!

Side: We really want to advance in combat skills without doing silly unrealistic stuff. Advancing combat skills satisfying for us and we don't want to be punished for the lack of ways to realistically progress, which is a large part of what we find enjoyable. Here are some ways we could do it.

Other Side: If you advanced much further in skill gains, you'd be game-breakingly powerful. You can already get wildly strong without <master> or even <advanced>. We don't really want PCs to be able to bare-handedly kill three half-giant soldiers. It's already possible, though difficult, and we don't want to make it more possible or less difficult because of the impact on the world.

Best Solution: Make journeyman combat skills say <master>, with anything above that saying <OMG SO EPIC!!> or <nachos with hot sauce>.

[Feco]

I think the point though, Feco, is that for those of us who ARE achievers, we want to see that we CAN be "master" at something. Bragging rights be damned, it feels good to know you achieved that "final level".

You can be "more than competent" at combat at this plateau. But this plateau has you at Journeyman in your skills. Before we could SEE our skill levels, we knew how strong we were by what we COULDN'T fight... but you can't have a Bynner go off and fight gith and mantis and stupid stuff for "no reason" just to find a challenge, mostly because there are the stories that when you DO, staff animate something to kick your butt.

I want to be a master slashing. On any of my PCs that attained it, I didn't kill a single other PC with those skills. I didn't even go to RPTs for it.

But I used it as a plot point that... yes. I AM a master in this skill, so you should learn from me.

#makeMasterMatter

I would like to add that I had mastered several skills on the PC in question.  It just took time.  The advancement was slower, but I think that makes perfect sense.

[yousuff]

Oops wrong thread

[Riev]

I would like to add that I had mastered several skills on the PC in question.  It just took time.  The advancement was slower, but I think that makes perfect sense.

The time factor, I'm okay with. Honestly. I've had PCs at 50days played that were still learning stuff and I'm a bit of a code-focused person.

The point is that non-combat classes can reach (master) in their respective and specialized skills "easily" when compared to combat classes. Rightly so in a PvP game, and in a world where PCs and NPCs are on the same coded skill sheets. Again, I GET IT. I'm just saying... reduce the cap for weapon skills then, and make it so that advancement has more to do with time, roleplay, and IC consequences and less me trying to find the turaal that spawned with max agility and "fail my bash" every time.

I have NO problem saying "I want to be a grandmaster mace wielder, but to be that I have to study under someone who knows the techniques", so long as staff are loose about the request when there ARE no PCs (or no PCs in your playtime) to accommodate. There should never be a time where someone offers a Byn Officer 1000 coins for a month of advanced training and told "no", but NOT give them opportunity to then do it with Tor or something.

I would like to add that I had mastered several skills on the PC in question.  It just took time.  The advancement was slower, but I think that makes perfect sense.