Weapon Skills - Piercing, Bludgeoning etc

[Cerelum]

Without getting into coded intricacies, and getting this thread thrown into moderation.

Is it normal for combat skills to advance SUPER god damn slowly?

It's the one thing I've never been able to do in all my characters is to get myself out of novice or apprentice levels of it.

Where I've mastered crafts, psionics, magick spells and all sorts of other things, combat seems to never move for me.

from reading help faq_9, it states that you learn from failure.  And trust me I fail to hit things and fight a lot, but it doesn't seem to move.  I just want to make sure I'm not doing something wrong or if it's just by design that way to be extremely slow.

[Bushranger]

Slowest of the slow skills. You will regularly think that something is broken, that you're doing something wrong, that staff have flagged something on your character so that weapon skills will not advance or that you misread the help file for your class and novice or apprentice is the maximum for your weapon skills.

At least this is my experience.

[Eyeball]

Is it normal for combat skills to advance SUPER god damn slowly?

We've been officially told that this grows more applicable the further the character is away from being "heavy combat" on the combat axis. I wonder whether a heavy mercantile character might ever budge at all, even with Byn-style training.

[mansa]

Is it normal for combat skills to advance SUPER god damn slowly?

Yes.

Weapon skills has addition checks to see the skill level of the opponents.  If the opponent is skillful, you learn quicker.

This is to reduce getting "master" of fighting rats and other low skill opponents.

[Riev]

Combat skills are also, as far as I've ever noticed, the one set of skills that aren't "1 fail = 1 skill up".

So where as for crafting, you fail to sharpen that dagger correctly, and you get insight into doing it better
When fighting, a single miss doesn't give you the insight you need in how to swing that sword better. You need to miss half a dozen times before you figure out you're holding it by the blade-end.

And as already posted, you can't really get yourself to "master" levels by fighting sickly children and old people. You need to find someone better than you, who can kill you easily, and hope they don't decide to kill you.

[Feco]

I think it's worth mentioning that PCs feel like combat heavyweights well before these skills reach Master level.

[th3kaiser]

I'd totally agree, Feco. I've killed plenty of people outside with journeyman combat skills.

Also, I think we were all happier with our weapon skills when we couldn't see the levels. Before it was, I'm pretty great at fighting! Now it's, I'm not maxxed!

[Alesan]

I don't really agree with putting everyone who isn't happy with seeing their weapon skills seemly stuck at novice-apprentice into the "But I'm not Master" category. Please don't do that. Not everyone thinks that way, and it's insulting when it's implied that they do.

[Cerelum]

I don't really agree with putting everyone who isn't happy with seeing their weapon skills seemly stuck at novice-apprentice into the "But I'm not Master" category. Please don't do that. Not everyone thinks that way, and it's insulting when it's implied that they do.

It's not that serious, don't be insulted by things that don't matter.

If they are right that it's risk versus skill gain chance then if all you do is fight easy critters all day, you probably will never get better.

I know that even though my skills have never gone high, I've had some rangers that could kill some tough critters with my apprentice whatever, so I guess it depends on how much you challenge yourself.

Now everyone go right mekillots to work your way towards master in combat skills lol

[Greve]

There's a few big differences between then and now, though:

1) A couple of the new classes branch very important skills from weaponskills. In the past, only warriors branched anything and they weren't class-defining skills. The old special weaponskills were nearly impossible to make use of, it was more of a badass badge than an actual improvement. So few characters were able to raise the branched weaponskills to meaningful levels.

2) Back then there was a number of well-known tricks and a variety of dodgy NPC enemies you could fight to raise weaponskills beyond where they get stuck from ordinary everyday use. Stilt lizards, halflings, fighting drunk/encumbered, etc. Almost all of these tricks and NPCs have been removed or nerfed, or rendered invalid by the new offense vs. defense checks.

3) Mainguild magickers existed as a kind of wildcard option for coded power that wasn't tied to combat skills, so if you wanted to play an antagonist but didn't want to grind out slashing or backstab or whatever, you could go mage. The new magick subclasses depend much more on combat skills and don't have the same kind of spell arsenal.

4) There was a much harder line between combat and non-combat with the old guilds, and more skill monopoly. Getting stuck at jman weapons as a warrior, ranger or assassin didn't feel so bad because you had so many other skills that were more or less unique to your guild. Now there's so much overlap that if you're stuck at jman with a heavy combat class, you have to wonder if you weren't better off playing a light combat or mixed instead because they can get most of the same skills plus a whole lot more.

It's just an irritating situation where we have three classes that can master weaponskills but you're barely allowed to do so because caring about them has become synonymous with being a horrible twink who doesn't know what roleplay is. Now it's largely down to the totally arbitrary nature of whether or not you're clanned with some long-lived fighter who can dodge your attacks, or know one of the few remaining and highly controversial alternatives to that. For most characters, there just isn't anything that can be done to raise weaponskills past the level that can be achieved even by the classes at the very bottom of the combat spectrum, which feels bad.

You don't need master weaponskills to be good at fighting, but the plateau point is so low that it's just silly. Journeyman is one level above what the heavy combat classes start with, yet that's about as high as you can get without doing absurd things that staff with scoff at, or being lucky enough to know one of the very, very few characters who have high defense and will spar regularly. This means that some players get to max their weapon skills through either borderline cheating or the totally arbitrary nature of knowing some legacy fighter, and everyone else has to accept that their weapon skills are forever stuck at a level barely higher than what they started with. It's a broken, misdesigned system from the mid-90s.

If they are right that it's risk versus skill gain chance then if all you do is fight easy critters all day, you probably will never get better.

Now everyone go right mekillots to work your way towards master in combat skills lol

The problem is that that's not the case. It isn't risk vs. reward, it's just largely OOC factors: do you know what obscure, exotic creature happens to still have high defense these days, or do you have a buddy with a 50d+ combat char who's willing to let you swing at him on a daily basis? If yes, you get to be a combat god. If no, you get stuck at the halfway point. There's rarely any actual risk to it. Notoriously, some of the most effective things to train against have been completely harmless critters that just happen to have high agility/defense because that's what some builder gave them however many years ago. Most of the things that are actually dangerous won't dodge your attacks if you're anywhere north of 10 days played. In fact, the most dangerous things in Zalanthas are almost universally crap at dodging and therefore won't count as a "risk."

A mekillot is useless for training because its coded defenses come from armor, not the ability to dodge, but dodging is the only thing that helps. This means that tons of immensely dangerous things are, in the eyes of the code, totally trivial fights when it comes to whether or not your character learns from the experience. If a canyon squirrel can dodge you but a bahamet cannot, the code considers the squirrel a worthy opponent and the bahamet a pushover. It's total nonsense and something that has needed to be changed since the big defense nerf of 2006 or whenever it was.

[Namino]

If they are right that it's risk versus skill gain chance then if all you do is fight easy critters all day, you probably will never get better.

Now everyone go right mekillots to work your way towards master in combat skills lol

The problem is that that's not the case. It isn't risk vs. reward, it's just largely OOC factors: do you know what obscure, exotic creature happens to still have high defense these days, or do you have a buddy with a 50d+ combat char who's willing to let you swing at him on a daily basis? If yes, you get to be a combat god. If no, you get stuck at the halfway point. There's rarely any actual risk to it. Notoriously, some of the most effective things to train against have been completely harmless critters that just happen to have high agility/defense because that's what some builder gave them however many years ago. Most of the things that are actually dangerous won't dodge your attacks if you're anywhere north of 10 days played.

A mekillot is useless for training because its coded defenses come from armor, not the ability to dodge, but dodging is the only thing that helps. This means that tons of immensely dangerous things are, in the eyes of the code, totally trivial fights when it comes to whether or not your character learns from the experience. If a canyon squirrel can dodge you but a bahamet cannot, the code considers the squirrel a worthy opponent and not the bahamet. It's total nonsense and something that has needed to be changed since the big defense nerf of 2006 or whenever it was.

I feel like we've had this conversation (we as a community, I mean) about five times in the last two months. A brief summary of the various points and resulting stances taken re those other topics:

Weapon skills and offense/defense are much slower to increase than other skills as has been pointed out by Riev above. This is intentional as designed, as there is no other reason it takes more fails for a weapon than for a craft. That was an intentional design decision and makes sense -- you can fail a weaponskill 10 times much more quickly than a craft skill.

Weapon skills and offense/defense also tend to asymptote far below master when used in an organic fashion. As Greve has summarized, there are inorganic ways to punch through this ceiling that are largely determined by one's meta-game knowledge. But unlike the common wisdom of most game design, this is not centered around increasing challenges opening access to increasing strength, rather around nebulous code tricks that circumvent the parameters that usually stymie skill growth. Personally, I believe that both the causes of this asymptotic skill curve as well as the means by which to avoid it are emergent properties that were never adequately anticipated during the design phase.

The official staff line from Brokkr when this was last brought up a week or two ago, is that the inability to reach high levels of offensive/defensive skill is a happy accident, as the current design of the game cannot tolerate highly skilled player characters in this regard.

So, in summary: Weapon skills do increase slower. I argue that aspects of this are intentional, and aspects of this are not. Player characters are not intended to become very strong in Armageddon, so the fact that these skills stall out well below their potential is a positive development in the eyes of the Staff. Players with meta knowledge can circumvent this stall however, raising the questions of the validity of this system.

Personally, I think the necessity of a major and thorough overhaul is a painful reality, specifically one that either makes it that player characters achieving high skill levels is both organically achievable and tolerable in the new framework, or else player characters cannot achieve these levels of skill regardless of their meta-wrangling.

This bullet needs biting eventually.

[Cerelum]

Guys,

Don't get the thread moderated by telling all the secrets of how the skill worked.

I honestly just wasn't aware of the HUGE swing in how skills advance differently.

I've had Mon level magick spells in two days of playing.

I've had master level crafts in a week.

But as I said I've never had higher than apprentice (that I can remember) in two or three week played characters.  But I tend to play hunters, not PK'ers, so maybe that level of skill is only gainable by being a killer.

[th3kaiser]

Yikes, I was just making a lighthearted comment. In any case, I really have no issues with the rate of weapon skill gain. Seems better than it used to be, at least in my experience. But I'm also an outlier who doesn't ever spar or join clans, so I imagine your mileage may vary.

[Brytta Léofa]

As a point of reference: I've had a heavy combat-class character in the Byn reach journeyman in his preferred weapon style (weapon skill and wield type) by 5 days played. Mind you, a lot of that time is sparring with skilled PCs, and those skills started at apprentice.

I think if you don't reach journeyman in <reasonable number of days> played, you might be doing something "wrong." And I assume that by the time you hit advanced you're just wrecking face and the question is sorta academic.

[Dresan]

My problem with the change isn't the soft cap. Lets face it for most people even with the old system journeyman was where you were getting stuck in regardless. There were only a few people with the patience, luck and longevity to grind towards branching weapons, and its not like it didn't keep them from dying eventually.

My problem is how this soft cap has been implemented.

Training with newbies with now moot, mostly an act of charity.
Training with regular critters will quickly become moot.
No point in hoping for those lucky misses or lucky hits, that won't help unless its a 'risk' (good luck with that)
With class changes and this soft cap have become even more important because skills don't always help you overcome bad strength or terrible agility
Best way to train is in clans, besides additional hidden training benefits, staff may throw events that pit you against mobs that will train you.

I get it, people wanted clans to be worth while, but to do so by  making other training activities outside clans eventually become completely futile is beyond me. I must be the only one with RL commitments and demands that make it so logging into a clan routine is perhaps not the best way to spend the couple of hours that I have to relax.

The combat grind was never fun but it was something to do, it was just training with the potential to get better, you almost never did anyways, however it helped pass time before some interesting RP came along.

[Eyeball]

Player characters are not intended to become very strong in Armageddon

I'd like to point out how this was never the original intent of the game, or even into the 2000's. It's a recent policy that has seen sorcerers, elementalists, and now fighters all reduced in potency. The question is, why? Is it to take away danger and challengers to sponsored roles and make sure commoners all remain prey?

[Eyeball]

As a point of reference: I've had a heavy combat-class character in the Byn reach journeyman in his preferred weapon style (weapon skill and wield type) by 5 days played. Mind you, a lot of that time is sparring with skilled PCs, and those skills started at apprentice.

I think if you don't reach journeyman in <reasonable number of days> played, you might be doing something "wrong." And I assume that by the time you hit advanced you're just wrecking face and the question is sorta academic.

You just answered yourself here, effectively. Your character advanced because he happens to have a windfall in sparring partners. Other people aren't doing anything wrong, they just don't have that resource available and the game doesn't provide any reasonable alternative now.

And how would you feel about that clan if those sparring partners weren't there? Every day you're required to drag your ass into the sparring hall, spar, spar, spar, but knowing the net effect is nothing?

[Namino]

Player characters are not intended to become very strong in Armageddon

I'd like to point out how this was never the original intent of the game, or even into the 2000's. It's a recent policy that has seen sorcerers, elementalists, and now fighters all reduced in potency. The question is, why? Is it to take away danger and challengers to sponsored roles and make sure commoners all remain prey?

You'll not hear arguments from me. Personally I think the current implementation of this mechanic is amongst the most poorly conceived in any game I've played in recent memory.

None of this changes the fact that the staff have expressed positive opinions of the hamstringing of skill progression as beneficial for the game.

Until this view amongst the producers changes, this whole argument is fruitless. They're not going to 'solve' something that is not a problem in their previously expressed view.

[Cerelum]

I have never to my knowledge gotten much higher than X critter killer strength.

But again I play mostly outdoor characters because I find the city boring and the crime code to be too rigid.

One thing I did notice was that animals seem to have a layered progression to them and if you really search you can find something that's challenging but not instant death.

However I did take like a two year break to the game so who knows if my experience is still valid. The problem I ran into with critters was a logistical one though, after so long they get crazy poisons to which cures are hard to come by, they somehow become experts at disarm and bashing etc.

It's my hope that to advance you don't have to be a pk powerhouse and spend seven years in the byn but from what you guys are saying even that doesn't seem to work.

[Riev]

Its not that it 'doesn't work' or anything. You don't need to specifically be a 'PK Powerhouse' either. Some people play an Enforcer to see those high weapon skills, but they plateau after about 5-10 days played (which to me, is the average lifespan of a really interesting character).

So why pick a "heavy" combat class, if you're not going to be able to take advantage of the skills they offer? Why not just play a Light Combat class, who gets their weapon skills to the same level?

End all be all is, this is the intended way the game was designed. You have to miss more for any combat skills (heck, even kick and bash take forever) than you do for a skill that does not end with the injury of a PC. The issue with your 2 year break is that during that time, critters and techniques got 'stealth-nerfed' so you have to find skills PCs to train off of. This is fine, IF those PCs exist for you. If they do not, or you aren't allowed access to them, it feels like a boner-killer.

[Brokkr]

What are your goals, specifically?
What is the timeframe to accomplish those goals?

[Greve]

I don't think you need to have specific goals to qualify for skill progress. No such criterion is ever asked of other skill categories. People can freely max out steal, spell suites, lockpicking, backstab, crafting and so on without needing to argue their case for it. It's specifically weapon skills and a few associated skills that have this mysterious stigma about them. I'm not even convinced that it's some deliberate measure to regulate the power of PCs, because if that were the case, the same difficulty would have been made to apply to backstab, archery, fireball, poisoning, etc. I think we're just working with a system that was designed in like 1995 by some teenager and now it's being justified retrospectively as if these issues were always deliberate.

It's not about timeframe at all. Combat skills go up at a perfectly satisfactory rate if you can miss. The problem is that you suddenly stop missing, and unless you have access to (or a willingness to go on ridiculous adventures in search of) one of the aforementioned solutions, which most don't, then you stop advancing entirely at that point. If that point came a long ways into the progress curve, that would be one thing. I think it would be perfectly suitable for the last bits of skill to require something unusual and risky. But that's not the case. That hurdle comes so early that it feels dysfunctional.

Seriously, roll up an enforcer and you nearly begin at that point. The hurdle isn't at high advanced, it's at low/mid-journeyman depending a bit on your stats and how much offense your chosen class begins with. That's the point where almost nothing will dodge your attacks anymore and you either have to have OOC knowledge of some obscure creature in a far-flung corner of the world that can dodge better than the rest of the world's fauna, or a high-defense PC who's willing to spar. The latter is often just absent in any given clan.

[Riev]

What are your goals, specifically?
What is the timeframe to accomplish those goals?

To hone the skills my character is naturally talented at, and possibly make a name for themselves (or at least massive coin) from such prowess. This is difficult to do as a fighter, as it takes 10 IC years to 'git gud', but a crafter can be carving out custom horror shell engravings on day 3.

The timeframe is a red herring.
Your idea of acceptable timeframe isn't my idea of acceptable timeframe.
You measure timeframes in RL time played, with less weight on in-game time spent roleplaying.
My idea of timeframe is in time/effort spent playing the role. Interesting is measured in Risks Taken, but advancement is awarded to the risk-averse.

[mansa]

Maybe we shouldn't be comparing to a timeframe but to a proficiency against select combat scenarios.

Player vs Rat
Player vs Beggar
Player vs NPC soldier
Player vs Drive Beetle
Player vs Gith
Player vs Gith Captain
Player vs Iggy
Player vs Mekillot

Who are we trying to kill with combat?

[Cerelum]

Maybe we shouldn't be comparing to a timeframe but to a proficiency against select combat scenarios.

Player vs Rat
Player vs Beggar
Player vs NPC soldier
Player vs Drive Beetle
Player vs Gith
Player vs Gith Captain
Player vs Iggy
Player vs Mekillot

Who are we trying to kill with combat?

I sorta do my outside characters like this with critters, start with chalton, then move to x, y, z.

But from what I'm hearing here, that doesn't work any longer.